SGHOOL PROGRESS 



HMi 



AND 



SGHOOL FAGTS 

mmm 



SCHOOL PROBLEMS? 

ARE YOU SCHOOL needs ? 
INTERESTED ^ school results ? 

jps^ SCHOOL FACTS? 

SCHOOL REPORTS AS THEY ARE? 



Price, 25 Cent 



BUREAU OF MUNICIPAL RESEARCH 
261 Broadway 

July, 1909 



CONTENTS 

Foreword : page 

Trustees, Bureau of Municipal Research 3-7 

School Reports As They Are : A Rejoinder : 

John L. Tildsley, Principal DeWitt Clinton High 
School, New York City, answered point for point from 
official records by Mr. Allen . 8-38 

School Repoits As they Are : 

William H. Allen ... , 39-56 

Questions Answered by School Reports As They Are : 

Bureau of Municipal Research . , . . . 57-73 



SCHOOL PROGRESS 

AND 

SCHOOL FACTS 



ARE YOU 



SCHOOL PROBLEMS ? 
SCHOOL NEEDS? 



INTERESTED ^ SCHOOL results? 



IN 



SCHOOL FACTS? 

SCHOOL REPORTS AS THEY ARE? 



Price, 25 Cents 



BUREAU OF MUNICIPAL RESEARCH 
'' 261 Broadway 

July, 1909 



v.%^''^ 

v.^;.^ 



Pui; • 
if N'09 



FOREWORD 
BY THE TRUSTEES 

of the 

BUREAU OF MUNICIPAL RESEARCH 



In the May number of the Educational Review appeared an 
article by Dr. John L. Tildsley, Principal of the DeWitt Clinton 
High School, New York City, which contained several misstate- 
ments of fact and several ungrounded inferences relative to the 
Bureau of Municipal Research. The article is entitled "School 
Reports As They Are; A Rejoinder," and was prompted by an 
earlier article in the February number of the Educational Review 
by Mr. William H. Allen, entitled "School Reports As They Are." 

As writer of numerous articles on educational topics, and as 
author of books dealing with educational efficiency, Mr. Allen is 
competent to make for himself explanations or defences of publi- 
cations in his name. Therefore, with those portions of Dr. 
Tildsley's article which refer to Mr. Allen, as writer, the Bureau 
of Municipal Research does not concern itself farther than to 
publish for distribution (a) Mr. Allen's original article, (b) an 
index to facts answered in 72 reports, (c) Dr. Tildsley's article, 
and (d) Mr. Allen's reply. So far, however, as the purpose 
and method of the Bureau of Municipal Research have been 
misrepresented or inadequately represented, the trustees of 
that Bureau feel it incumbent upon them to modify, correct or 
deny five propositions in Dr. Tildsley's article : 

I. "The chief aims of the Bureau of Municipal Research are 
the discovery of facts and the installation of systems 
of recording fc^cts." {p. 435). 

The purposes of the Bureau of Municipal Research are de- 
fined in its charter and have been repeatedly published and demon- 
strated through works as follows: — "To promote efficient and 
economical municipal government; to promote the adoption of 
scientific methods of accounting and of reporting the details of 
municipal business with a view to facilitating publicity in matters 
pertaining to municipal problems ; to collect, to classify, to analyze, 
to correlate, to interpret and to publish facts as to the administra- 
tion of municipal government." 



2. "A recent report of the Bureau supports the contention 

of Dr. Maxwell's report that medical inspection 
should be transferred to the hoard of education and 
that laws should be passed compelling parents to 
secure medical service for their children." {p. 43p). 

The report from which this sentence is quoted, "A Bureau 
of Child Hygiene," was first given out by Health Commissioner 
Darlington at a joint session of public education associations and 
the International Congress on Tuberculosis, at Washington, Octo- 
ber, 1908. It showed that more law was not necessary for parents 
of 96% of 1400 children and that the break-down of physical ex- 
amination was due, not to the fact that it was under the health 
department, but to administrative weaknesses which were easily 
corrected in the case of the 1400 children studied, by instruction 
of mothers and by facilitating treatment of children found to 
have easily removable defects. Instead of supporting the con- 
tentions mentioned in the rejoinder, it proved that substituting 
efficiency for inefficiency in the department of health had ac- 
complished in three schools the results contemplated by the 
passage of additional laws and by the transfer of examination to 
the department of education. 

3. "The Bureau probably made special reports leading to a 

reduction of $5,500,000 in the board of education 
budget for ipop." (pp. 440, 442, 445). 

The Bureau of Municipal Research made no special reports 
whatever to the committee that made up the tentative budget al- 
lowances for 1909, nor to the board of estimate or the board of 
aldermen which finally passed those allowances. By invitation of 
Mayor McClellan and Comptrolkr li/Eetz, the Bureau's representa- 
tives cooperated with the so-caHed "budget committee" which 
went over in detail the various departmental estimates and the 
recommendations of the bureau of municipal investigation and 
statistics. It made no statements about the school estimates to 
that committee which it had not printed during the three months 
preceding in the form of budget notes for the newspapers. Its 
participation was confined to asking questions which brought out 
for discussion reasons for or against recommendations made by 
the bureau of municipal investigation and statistics. The minutes 
of the sessions will show that when the evidence was before the 
committee the Bureau's representatives (i) had no responsibility 



for effecting any of the reductions mentioned vSpecifically by Dr. 
Tildsley; (2) suggested that either more facts be obtained to 
justify the discrepancy in the repair allowances for Queens and 
The Bronx, or that such discrepancies be eliminated; (3) ex- 
pressed the belief that the community wanted a progressive policy 
in vocational training. 

When its representatives declared that the community was in 
favor of more money for kitchens and vocational training, city 
officials replied that although money had been repeatedly voted for 
these purposes, the board of education had failed to use the funds 
for such purposes. 

When it declared that the enforcement of the Newsboys' Law 
and the Compulsory Attendance Law would require a larger in- 
crease in the funds for attendance officers, the city officials replied 
that funds voted the preceding year for increasing the number of 
attendance officers had been used for other purposes and that the 
city superintendent of schools had expressed satisfaction with 
$ii3,ocx) rather than $126,000 for attendance officers in 1909. 

4. "Since the Bureau of Municipal Research claims the 

credit, it must he held responsible for the great in- 
jury to the educational system wrought as a result 
of its activities." {p. 441). 

As was shown above, the Bureau of Municipal Research 
never claimed, never had, credit for reductions. Never in its 
history has the department of education been given all of the 
money that it requested. A cut of several million dollars was 
taken for granted by all officials and taxpayers, months before 
the budget for 1909 was discussed. With regard to the school 
budget, as with regard to every other budget, the Bureau of Mu- 
nicipal Research has consistently held that the city has money 
enough to prevent all injuries which can be proved, and that 
money should be refused or voted only because of evidence that 
it is needed or not needed. At the time the reductions referred to 
by Dr. Tildsley were made, the educational authorities did not 
prove or attempt to prove the injuries now alleged by the re- 
joinder. 

5. The Bureau of Municipal Research "has acquired, on the 

one hand an over-developed critical faculty of a 



rather destructive kind; on the other, it is the 
prophet of salvation through fact-seeking, fact-col- 
lecting and fact-arranging. It is inclined to lay em- 
phasis on system, and not men, on bookkeeping 
rather than personality; and therefore, Mr. Allen, in 
the spirit of his institution, has noted slight dis- 
crepancies and has enlarged upon them." {p. 448). 

Mayor McClellan, Comptroller Metz, Health Commissioner 
Darlington, the Charter Revision Commission, the Joint Legisla- 
tive Committee to Investigate New York City's Finances, Gover- 
nor Hughes, the Chamber of Commerce, the Merchants' Asso- 
ciation, not to mention hosts of editorial writers and private citi- 
zens, have disagreed with the rejoinder and called attention to the 
fact that the critical faculty of the Bureau of Municipal Research 
is never simply destructive, but is notably constructive. 

Characterizing the Bureau's method Mayor McClellan^s mes- 
sage of Jan. 4, 1909, said : "The service of the Bureau in purely 
municipal work marks a new departure in city government, — the 
active cooperation of the public with the city administration." 
Commissioner of Accounts Mitchel wrote in the New York World 
of Sept. 6, 1908 : "The Bureau of Municipal Research may very 
properly be considered the most important non-official expression 
of popular concern for the efficient conduct of New York's mu- 
nicipal business." 

The Chamber of Commerce has urged all taxpayers of New 
York to give the Bureau "their strong financial and moral sup- 
port," because "its work is constructive and is along the line of 
helpful criticism rather than hostile attack." 

Governor Hughes, at the Budget Exhibit, Nov. 2, 1908, said : 
"The character of the Bureau's investigation to aid administration 
in this city marks one of th^ most important improvements of re- 
cent years. It is striving to get at the facts in an honorable, 
straightforward way and is striving to present them so that 
they will be intelligently comprehended." 

Prof. L. S. Rowe, in his book on "Problems of City Govern- 
ment," says : 

"The establishment of the Bureau of Municipal Research in 
New York City marks an epoch in the process of enlightening 
public opinion. The education of public opinion in municipal af- 



fairs, which has been pushed with such vigor during the last few 
years, must now be systematized and made general throughout the 
United States. Every community in the country stands in need of 
agencies such as the Bureau of Municipal Research of New York 
City, to place the public in full possession of the facts concerning 
municipal services." 

The Bureau is the prophet, not of salvation but of intelligent 
citizenship, not through fact-seeking, fact-collecting and fact- 
arranging merely but through fact-understanding of the truth by 
the general public. If it lays emphasis on system and bookkeep- 
ing, it is only because experience has proved that proper system 
and bookkeeping reveal the truth about the efficiency of men and 
personality. Without system the ablest men are certain to become 
victims of unfounded charges. 

The New York Times, commenting upon the need for ade- 
quate school records, recently described the position which the 
Bureau has been trying to have universally adopted: "The 
board of education ought to have all the information a factory 
manager would require to know whether his plant was work- 
ing efficiently and where improvement was possible." 

Far from noting slight discrepancies and enlarging upon 
them, the Bureau of Municipal Research has founded its public 
statements upon most exhaustive examination not only of the or- 
ganization of departments discussed, but also of records running 
over years, showing results of departmental activity. 

In presenting these considerations, the trustees of the Bureau 
of Municipal Research have had in mind not only the body of 
students and administrators who may have been misled by Dr. 
Tildsley's article, but also business men and educators in New 
York and elsewhere who have received reprints of that article 
directly from school officials or from New York City's Public 
Education Association. 

(Signed) 

Edwin R. A. Seligman, Chairman Richard Watson Gilder 
Frank Tucker^ Vice-Chairman John B. Pine 

R. Fulton Cutting, Treasurer Albert Shaw 

Frank A. Vanderlip 



SCHOOL REPORTS AS THEY ARE: A REJOINDER 

Socrates considered the Sophists undesirable citizens in that 
they always sought to make the worse cause appear the better. 
Is there not grave danger in these days that the fact-hunting 
reformer, as he runs amuck among the departments of the 
government of a great city, may make the better cause appear 
the worse? Is there not ground to fear, as he attempts to show 
Repeatedly the National Education Association has de- 
clared that in reporting school work and school needs any 
confusion which makes it impossible to discover the inef- 
ficient, wasteful and dishonest also covers up honesty, econ- 
omy and efficiency, 
all departments to be badly managed, all officers inefficient, 
and many of them dishonest, that the confidence of the people 
may be so shaken in the possibility of efficient government 
that two disastrous results will ensue, the first one, that our 
best men may be unwilling to take office, the second that citi- 
zens may seek to contract rather than to expand the activities 
of our city governments? 

Deplorable as it would be for citizens to lose faith in the 
honesty and efficiency of the management of other city depart- 
ments, it would be most disastrous should they lose their faith 
in those who administer our schools, and thus be led to curtail 
the work of the schools. 

Nothing could be more deplorable than for educators to 
mislead the public's faith in the principle of universal educa- 
tion, and either to misrepresent the purposes for which money 
is being spent, to spend more than is needed on the quantity 
and quality of education maintained, or to spend millions 
without attempting to apply efficiency tests to policies and 
methods. 
The attacks that are being made upon the administration of 
our schools today can only further the cause of those taxpayers 
who under the guise of economy seek to cut down to the lowest 
limits expenditures for education and especially those for teach- 
ers' salaries. 

So far as New York is concerned, taxpayers' bodies have 
repeatedly gone on record as demanding adequate pay. In 



School Reports as They Are: A Rejoinder, appeared in the Educational Review for 
May, 1909, signed by John L. Tildsley, Principal DeWitt Clinton High School, New York 
City. To distinguish the rejoinder from my comment upon it, the former is printed in 
full width, 10 point Roman type; the latter, indented in 8 point black face. 



igo8, when school officials were requested to explain to tax- 
payers their estimate, including salary changes, not only did 
the president and the city superintendent decline to come, 
but the latter forbade Miss Grace Strachan to come to ex- 
plain the salary increase bill. Numerous statements on con- 
troverted points made by the educational authorities to tax- 
payers were, as will be shown later, misstatements. 

Those of us who have been trying for years to obtain for 
the teachers of New York City a Hving wage, and who have 
finally convinced the Board of Education of the wisdom of 
securing this for its teachers, are most apprehensive of the un- 
fortunate effects which may arise from the publication of an 
article in the February issue of this Review which, under the 
guise of a study of school reports, is largely a malevolent criti- 
cism of the management of the public school system of New 
York City. 

No criticism of the management of the public school 
system in New York City which was ever written by a per- 
son outside the school system could do so much to shake 
public confidence in school management as does this re- 
joinder, with its inaccuracies, misstatements, evasions, mis- 
quotations, and unconvincing apologies. The fact that the 
writer and his collaborators among school officers and em- 
ployees wish to help the schools only aggravates the injury 
done by them in exhibiting publicly, through this rejoinder, 
so many weaknesses which heretofore were suspected but, for 
want of records, difficult to prove. 

This article, by reason of the position the writer occupies 
as Secretary of the Bureau of Municipal Research, is sure, if 
unanswered, to exert a very unfortunate influence not only in 
New York City but elsewhere. 

This article was requested by Dr. Nicholas Murray 
Butler, who wished the subject treated "from the standpoint 
of the Bureau of Municipal Research and its general program 
for effective publicity." 

The same number that included it also had an ad- 
vertisement of School Reports and School Efficiency, with 
these words: "Its primary purpose is to show how the actual 
facts of school administration are to be got at, so that the 
school principal on the one hand, and the taxpayer on the 
other, can tell exactly how school funds have been expended 
and how the greatest efficiency in school management is to 
be secured." 

This article, written by Mr. Allen in collaboration with Dr. 
Elizabeth K. Adams of Smith College, seems to be based largely 



My article was based on work done during the summer 
of 1908, and so stated. Chapter VII was not "an earlier arti- 
cle," but prepared specially for the report of the committee 
on physical welfare of school children, which appeared under 
the title School Reports and School Efficiency, 
on an earlier article which constitutes Chapter VII of Snedden 
and Allen's School reports and school efficiency entitled "A prac- 
tical study of one school report" (New York City). 

Tho the article deals with the reports of some 62 diflferent 
cities, the chief emphasis is laid on the reports of the City 
72, not 62 different cities. The chief emphasis is not laid 
on the reports of the city superintendent of New York City, 
which were used only to illustrate points within my own 
experience and provable from records at hand. 
Superintendent of New York City. Of Dr. Maxwell's Eighth 
Annual Report for the year ending July 31, 1906, Mr. Allen 
in his earlier article thus wrote: "A word-to-word reading of 
this document of 479 pages shows that it deals with questions 
of tremendous moment not only to New York City but to the 
educational world. In fact, it is probable that no other single 
school report touches upon so many problems and so many aims 
of a public school system. Effective use is repeatedly made of 
tabular statements to disclose tendencies, to show increases and 
decreases, to advertise the needs of different districts and dif- 
ferent schools for special facilities, to interpret the progress of 
certain lines of educational effort." 

The commended chapter showed by actual citations that 
"so far as the New York report falls short, it is probably true 
of it, as of no other, that it is a serious handicap to educa- 
tional advance throughout the world." It was shown to be 
defective in technical methods, to waste space in setting up, 
to lack adequate summary tables. It was shown that totals 
were not classified; that districts having thousands of part-time 
pupils also actually had many seats to spare; that district sup- 
erintendents' reports were not uniform; that by the method used 
of reporting averages of standing, a class where eight out of 
ten have a passing mark of 70 might show 100 per cent, of 
failure; that numerous important questions regarding truancy 
were not answered; that needs were not shown with regard 
to roof gardens, gymnasiums, shower baths, proper ventila- 
tion, play space, adjustable desks, truant officers; that the 
cost of vacation schools was not shown; that the published 
per capita cost was not right; that the reasoning was often 
illogical and inconsequential, as in the cost of supplies; that 
the superintendent guessed where he might know the cause 
of children dropping out of school; that the school census 



was relatively futile for want of proper use by school au- 
thorities, and that because the census records were buried in 
the storeroom, another great opportunity was lost to help the 
cause of education by locating more clearly its problems; that 
the report regarding physical defects of school children was 
very deficient; that at a critical time, when the fiscal authori- 
ties of the city had become thoroughly interested in the possi- 
bility of saving millions in the future by extending health 
protection over all districts, the official report of the schools 
came out and did not even suggest that more money was 
needed for discovering the pupils' need of attention and for 
insuring such attention; that the report was not written to 
the general public; and that recommendations were made 
without giving the public facts to warrant them. 

No one can read Mr. Allen's article in the February Educa- 
tional Review .and accept his statements as facts and his 
conclusions as valid without believing that for some reason Mr. 
Alien has changed his opinion of the value of the reports of 
the City Superintendent. Indeed, one can hardly accept Mr. 
Allen's judgment of these reports as exprest in the last article 
and believe they are to any extent trustworthy as records of 
facts and interpreters of experience, for in an opening paragraph 
he writes, "After living in New York thru five years when 
schools and public alike have suffered because school problems 
were discust on theoretical and personal grounds just as if New 
York were without experience, I have come to believe that there 
is probably no need today in the educational world so pressing 
as that for adequate recording and reporting of school expe- 
rience." 

To confirm the conclusion quoted, much has happened 
recently: misstatements to the board of aldermen regarding 
playgrounds and vacation schools; confusion about school 
sites owned by the board of education; conflicting recom- 
mendations with regard to school accommodations needed; 
particularly the failure of a high school principal, the city 
superintendent of schools and the auditor to quote accurately 
and to interpret properly official records, which were easily 
accessible and presumably consulted while the rejoinder was 
in preparation. 

The discovery of facts and the installation of systems of 
recording facts are the chief aims of the Bureau of Municipal 
Research. 

The want of facts and a bad system of recording 
facts are the chief charges brought against school reports in 



general and those of New York City in particular. A judg- 
ment that is the result of years of observation, of conversation 
with hundreds of teachers, principals, and superintendents, is 
not, in Mr. Allen's opinion, a fact to be considered in deter- 
mining educational policy, if we judge him by his condemnation 
of the City Superintendent of New York for giving as the 
reason of the failure of certain pupils to complete the high 
school course, the result of his own experience and that of teach- 
ers, rather than tabulated figures. 

Observing and talking do not reflect the needs of 
600,000 children. "Conversations with hundreds of teachers, 
principals and superintendents" do not convey the result of 
school experience. Educators differ on so many points that 
the only recourse for laymen is definite information, reducible 
to some common language which means the same everywhere 
and at all times. Only a small number of principals and 
teachers participate in "conversations," while all are given an 
equal hearing by adequate reports. 
Mr. Allen's conception of the value of facts is best shown by 
his table of facts reported by the superintendents of ten cities. 
Altogether they report 3,048 different facts. The total possibility 
From a paragraph written to show nothing else but lack 
of uniformity. No attempt was made to decide which facts 
were valuable or not valuable. All facts from each report 
were recorded, 
of fact reporting by the ten cities was thus 30,480; the actual 
number reported was but 4,149; the ten superintendents failed 
in their duty of reporting facts to the extent of 27,423 facts. I 
quote exact figures. Of the total possible different facts, 3,048, 
the City Superintendent of New York reported 955, an efficiency 
of 31 per cent. The average of the whole group was but 13.5 
per cent., so that the City Superintendent of New York was 
twice as efficient as the average of the group, but even he fell 
into the C class, if the completion of facts be the true test of 
the efficiency of a superintendent. May we not well question Mr. 
Allen's dictum that the greatest need in education is the report- 
ing of such educational facts ? Is not a greater need the presence 
in our educational system of men of large vision, of keen insight 
and sound judgment, whose every utterance is a fact to be reck- 
oned with and worthy to form the basis for a new movement and 
a resulting expenditure of funds? 

For over fifty years leading educators have declared em- 
phatically that the "every utterance of men of large vision" 
is not a safe reliance "to form the basis for a new movement 



and resulting expenditure of funds." I can conceive of no 
doctrine that will do so much to shake the faith of citizens 
in both the honesty and efficiency of schools as to try to en- 
force the theory that the unsupported utterance of a superin- 
tendent of schools is enough to justify expenditure of funds. 
Suppose the next superintendent utters the reverse? Who 
knows what the "utterance" means? What if "every utter- 
ance" changes over night, as is often the case where school 
officials try to get results from an uninformed public? 

Through the rejoinder, the superintendent's "every utter- 
ance" declares that to carry out his recommendations will 
cost a mere bagatelle, and infinitely less than $25,000,000, 
whereas the list on page 14 shows that they represent an 
immediate outlay of $20,500,000 and a capitalized outlay of 
almost $200,000,000. 
Inasmuch as Mr. Allen lays so much emphasis on facts, and 
since he criticises school reports, and especially those of New 
York for the conspicuous absence of facts, it is but fair to Mr. 
Allen and to the various superintendents criticised, to take up 
the "facts" of his article and to test them to see if they really 
give us the truth, which is the aim of his Bureau. 

The first facts cited are that the New York report has not 
an adequate index, that the title does not appear on the back, that 
the typography could be improved, that the statistical tables could 
be better arranged, and that some of the sentences are long. 
Here Mr. Allen scores. Had he gone no farther, he might have 
achieved a reputation for candor and truthfulness. 

Such "facts" as the following, however, cited by the Secretary 
of the Bureau of Municipal Research, if allowed to stand un- 
challenged, would seriously lessen the possibilities for useful- 
ness of the City Superintendent of New York and shake the con- 
fidence of the public in our whole system of education. "It 
Nothing can shake the confidence of the public in our 
whole system of education so much as knowledge that it is 
not being given the whole truth with regard to its schools. 
If to execute twenty-six recommendations will cost $20,500,- 
000, the fact should be boldly stated and candidly defended. 
If, on the other hand, carrying out these recommendations 
would cost nearly $200,000,000, either all items should be 
defended by facts, or some of the recommendations with- 
drawn. To make recommendations without knowing what 
they will cost, and then to endeavor to minimize their cost, 
will everywhere and at all times lessen the possibilities for 
usefulness of any public official. 

Until the rejoinder, there was no reason to know that 
the superintendent's recommendations had been made with- 

13 



out some conception of their cost; I had merely emphasized 
the absence of supporting facts in his official statement to 
the public. It now appears that he had not only failed to 
compute the cost, but that he is so dismayed by my under- 
estimate that he practically says to the public, through this 
rejoinder, that the recommendations are not of a character 
to justify so great an expenditure. Sober deliberation will 
prove that many of them are worth what they need cost, 
would cost approximately $25,000,000 to carry out the recom- 
mendations made by Superintendent Maxwell of New York 

MINIMUM COST OF CARRYING OUT THE RE- 
COMMENDATIONS MADE BY NEW YORK 
CITY'S SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS 
IN THE ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE 
YEAR ENDING JULY 31st, 1907 




8 (I to 3) 
8 (4 to 5) 

II 
13 
14 
15 
16 

17 



Omitted by 
Dr. Tildsley 

19 
20 



22 

23 
24 

25 
26 



Salaries 

Salaries 

Building 

Salaries 

Buildings 

Salaries 

Salaries (Old law) . 
Salaries (New law) 

Building 

Salaries 

Building 

Salaries 

Salaries 

Supplies 

Salaries 

Salaries 

Salaries 

Buildings 

Salaries 

Trade school inquiry 

399 Kindergartners. 

79 Workshops 

Salaries 

74 Kitchens 

Salaries 

Assembly Hall 

Manual Training (?) 
Principal's Home. . . 
Classes for Mental 

Defectives 

Provision for School 

Meals at cost 



22,800 

6,000 

1,600,000 

240,000 

8,000,000 

1,200,000 

18,000 

18,000 

500,000 

150,000 

1,400,000 

320,000 

50,000 

1,000,000 

3,300,000 

280,000 

40,000 

600,000 

60,000 

20,000 



279,300 

57,275 
55.000 
70,000 
52,000 
50,000 
25,000 
25,000 

12,000 

1,000,000 

120,450,375 



427,500 

150,000 

11,600,000 

6,000,000 

8,000,000 

30,000,000 

450,000 

450,000 

500,000 

3,750,000 

1,400,000 

8,000,000 

1,250,000 

25,000,000 

82,500,000 

7,000,000 

1,000,000 

600,000 

1,500,000 

20,000 



7,000,000 

57,275 
1,375,000 
70, 000 
1,300,000 
50,000 
25,000 
25,000 

300,000 

1,000,000 

$190,799,775 



14 



City, beside a radical change in the responsibilities of the health 
and educational departments. How worth while, therefore, a 
support from facts that will enlist lay understanding, sympathy, 
and cooperation; how dangerous, also, recommendations not 
justified by experience." 

It is stated as a "fact" that the carrying out of the recom- 
mendations would cost $25,000,000. There is in addition a 
$190,000,000 should have been written. I excluded the 
teachers' salary increase because on page 132 of the super- 
intendent's report he says that while salaries should be in- 
creased, "I understand fully that, owing to financial condi- 
tions in this city, there is no immediate possibility of increas- 
ing teachers' salaries as I have recommended." 

To provide permanently for this $3,300,000 increase $82, 

500,000 would be required. If the educational authorities 

had examined their records and analyzed their experience 

they would have discovered that excluding teachers' salary 

increases, it would cost, without capitalizing annual cost, a 

minimum of $20,450,375 to carry out the recommendations 

listed by the rejoinder, including several that he has omitted. 

When a testator makes a bequest of $500 a year to a 

charitable society, he sets aside $12,500. His interest in that 

charity costs him not the annual donation, but that donation 

capitalized. A business man is not willing to add $100 to 

an employee's salary in December unless able to add $1,200 to 

the salary during the next twelve months, and unless his 

business warrants setting aside $30,000 for this purpose, or a 

capital that will produce $1,200. One reason why school 

finance has required a Carnegie Foundation and a General 

Education Board for higher education, and why the United 

States Commissioner must give a great deal of thought to 

financial data of public schools, is that school men have not 

fully realized, or at least have not fully confessed to their 

constituents, that when they ask for $50,000 a year they ask 

their communities to make a permanent investment of 

$1,250,000. 

broad insinuation that these recommendations are not based on 

On the contrary, there was a direct appeal for facts to 
justify and expedite the adoption of such recommendations 
as facts would support. 

facts, not justified by experience. Presumably the recommenda- 
tions referred to were those of the City Superintendent's Ninth 
Annual Report for the year ending July 31, 1907, the latest 
report published at the time of the writing of the article. 

15 



The complete recommendations of the City Superintendent for 
Omitted by rejoinder: (i) 399 additional kindergartners 
(pp. 32, 99, 106) requiring for salaries alone $279,300 or a 
cost of $7,000,000; (2) 79 workshops and 74 kitchens, cost 
not estimated; (3) assembly hall and manual training 
plant for Curtis High; (4) home for the principal of parental 
school; (5) more classes for mental defectives, which require 
larger salaries for teachers; (6) provision for school meals 
at cost. 

Will the superintendent itemize the cost of these six 
benefits at less than $10,000,000? That is an underestimate, 
as results are sure to show, 
the year ending July 31, 1907, were as follows: 

1. The consolidation of schools whenever possible. 

2. An increase in the number of special physical training 
teachers from 31 to 46. 

Superintendent asked for 50 (page 35). 19 additional of- 
ficers, at $900 the first year, would cost $17,100. The third 
year these same 19 would be getting $1,200 each, and would 
cost $22,800. The fifth year they would cost $28,500. Accept- 
ing the lowest figure, it would cost $427,500 to make the 
increase; accepting the highest figure, it would cost $712,500. 

3. Increase in the number of special teachers of music and 
drawing. 

For Brooklyn only. Number desired not stated. If same 
proportion as Manhattan and Bronx, six needed. This would 
require at least $6,000 the first five years, or $150,000. 

4. No new building to be built in Manhattan until congestion 
in Brooklyn and Queens is removed. 

Want of definite information probably accounts for the 
failure of the board and the superintendent himself to act 
upon this recommendation. The report for 1908 asks for 
new buildings in five Manhattan districts. It also says Man- 
hattan's attendance is practically stationary (p. 27) although 
2,608 greater than for 1907. Within a few weeks a building 
has been recommended for district No. 9 to cost, with equip- 
ment and site, about $700,000. 

5. Four large schools in Long Island City to be built to meet 
the growth of population due to the opening of the Williamsburg 
bridge and Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels. 

Will the educational authorities state what they proposed 
to spend for these schools, for sites and buildings, particularly 
whether they expected to spend less than $1,600,000? If 
"large" means 1,000 sittings, my estimate is too great; if 

16 



"large" means over 2,000, my estimate is conservative. Teach- 
ers' salaries for 8,000 pupils would be over $240,000 a year, 
representing a capital of $6,000,000. 

6. New schoolhouses for the forty thousand children between 
the ages of six and eight not now in school according to the 
Police Census. 

Did the board of education expect to spend less than 
$10,000,000 on buildings, sites and equipment? At $200 per 
sitting, the cost would be but $8,000,000; at $30 per child for 
instruction, the cost would be $1,200,000, a capital outlay of 
$30,000,000. Of course, many of the children can be provided 
for without building new schoolhouses; how many, the school 
report should show. If housing must be provided for 40,000 
children distributed throughout the city, it would cost more 
than $200 per child to provide the proper distribution of 
grade sittings. Instruction would cost $1,200,000 the first 
year. 

7. To make the Compulsory Education Law to apply to chil- 
dren between six and eight. 

Twenty additional truant officers, at the minimum of $900, 
would cost $18,000, representing $450,000. In three years, 
these 20 men would be costing $1,200 each, or $24,000, repre- 
senting $600,000. This does not provide for additional offi- 
cers to attend to children of three ages added. 

8. Recommends 

(i) An addition to the Boys' High School. 

(2) Completion of Erasmus Hall High School. 

(3) Addition to the Girls' High School. 

Was it planned to spend less than $500,000 for these three 
additions? Or less than $150,000, on teachers' salaries? 
These two represent an immediate outlay of $650,000 and a 
capital of $4,250,000. 

(4) New high school in crowded Ridgewood section. 

(5) New high school in Bay Ridge section. 

Was it planned to spend less than $1,400,000 for sites 
and buildings for these two high schools? The last three in 
Brooklyn cost $2,246,000; one of them $924,290. 

9. The high school departments of the Normal College and 
the City College to be placed under control of the Board of 
Education. 

10. That high school buildings be kept open until five o'clock 
every afternoon and on Saturday mornings until noon for the 
assistance of pupils. 

17 



How long can pupils be assisted afternoons and Saturday 
mornings without expense as promised on next page? 

11. Summer sessions of high schools for deficient pupils. 

Estimated on next page at $50,000 per year, or $1,250,000. 
When compared with description of what is to be accom- 
plished (page 83 of the superintendent's report) this sum is 
obviously too small. 

12. Permanent tenure for Board of Examiners. 

13. A stable income for the Special Fund. 

The superintendent surely did not have in mind a special 
fund tax that would provide for what the board has been 
given annually, instead of what it has asked for. The difEer- 
ence in these two sums for 1909 is $1,070,529.06. Did the 
superintendent have in mind a gain of less than $1,000,000 a 
year? To provide this would require a capital of $25,000,000. 

14. Readjustment of teachers' salaries. 

Would require a capital investment of over $82,500,000. - 

15. The foundation of a department of school hygiene. 

To make good on the superintendent's outline, pp. 133-143, 
will cost over $560,000 annually, a capital outlay of $15,000,- 
000. The salary of a nurse is $900 of a physician, $1,200. If 
cost of supervision, of clerical work, of supplies and inci- 
dentals be included, the foregoing estimate is low. In the 
table this item is given at $280,000. 

16. Certain amendments to the compulsory education law. 

Three years to the compulsory school age and sixty days 
to the compulsory school year, and to compel parents to pro- 
vide for proper mental and physical needs of their children. 

These include, (a) adding three years to the compulsory 
school age, and (h) 60 days to the compulsory school year, 
and (c) laws to compel parents to provide for proper mental 
and physical needs of their children. On the next page, the 
rejoinder says this "would simply add the cost of enforcing 
the law" — 'simply' meaning capital outlay of from $1,000,000 
to $2,000,000, a minimum annual expenditure of $40,000. 

17. Erection of one-story buildings for blind and crippled 
children, as in Chicago and London. 

Five, page 154. Had the superintendent in mind to spend 
less than $1,500,000 on the erection and equipment of these 
buildings, the purchase of sites, the conduct of classes? If 
he will put in black and white what he purposes to spend, this 
will, I believe, be found a conservative estimate. 

18. The formation of a committee to study trade schools. 

The rejoinder estimates $1,000 which is only another way 
of saying that the inquiry is not worth while. Evidently, when 
it comes to travelling and inquiries, our educators can make 
a dollar go farther than in the management of local schools. 

18 



The superintendent asks (page 146) "that as many members 
of your supervising force as may be necessary be sent to 
Europe and to different parts of this country to make a thor- 
ough study of trade schools." 

19. Deficient teachers to be excused with pay for fifteen after- 
noons to take special work in training schools, as in Chicago. 

How many deficients are there? Is it proposed to have 
this work done without cost by existing teachers? Will teach- 
ers be paid for their extra service? How long will there be 
no cost? Will no substitutes be required while different 
teachers are away? 

These are the recommendations which Mr. Allen says will cost 

$25,000,000 to carry into execution. He offers no figures in 

proof of this astounding statement. He evidently expects the 

The burden of proof is never on the citizen who asks a 
question, but on the official proponent of the recommenda- 
tions. Writing for a magazine is slightly different from 
writing an annual report to give an account of one's method 
of spending other people's money and supporting one's recom- 
mendations for further expenditure. The foregoing figures 
show that my statement was too low. It has brought into 
the open our educational authorities, with the misfortune, 
however, that a principal of a high school, instead of the 
superintendent of schools or an officer of the board, signs 
his name to the attempt to minimize the cost of carrying 
out the superintendent's recommendations. By circulating 
the rejoinder, however, the school authorities endorse that 
attempt. 

My moderation is astounding and reprehensible, not my 
estimate of $25,000,000. Astounding too is the fact that the 
rejoinder could have been published and circulated without 
our educational authorities, discovering that the minimum 
immediate outlay, counting only the first year's additional 
salaries, is $21,000,000; the more probable figure is $25,000,000; 
while the continued execution of the recommendations would 
require a capital outlay of almost $200,000,000. 
reader to accept these figures on the authority of the Secretary 

of the Bureau of Municipal Research, an unofficial and irrespon- 
sible body, but criticises the responsible head of the gre^t public 
school system for expecting people to adopt any one of his plans 
if he does not present statistical proofs for every statement he 
makes. "How worth while a support from facts !" Of these 
twenty recommendations Numbers i, 4, 9, would actually save 
money. Numbers 10, 12, 13, 19 would entail no extra expense. 
See preceding remarks after each item. 

19 



Numbers 2, 3, 5, 6, 8 call for expenditures which arise from 
the ordinary growth of the system and are practically of a routine 
This is begging the question. I said recommendations, not 
increase for new and unheard of experiments. Whether build- 
ing of schools should be discontinued in Manhattan, whether 
four large schools or four small schools should be erected 
in Long Island City, whether new school houses are needed 
to take care of children not in school, are questions of fact 
that taxpayers have a right to ask proof of before spending 
$10,000,000 and setting aside $36,000,000. 

character. Number 7, the modification of the compulsory school 
law, entails no new kind of expenditure, but merely the resulting 
increase of the old. Number 11 would cost approximately $50,- 

Even this underestimate means not $50,000 only but $50,- 
000 annually or $1,250,000. Numbers 7 and 16, as shown on 
page 12, mean simply $76,000 annually, or $1,900,000. 

000. Number 16 would simply add the cost of enforcing the law. 

Number 18 would cost less than $1,000. There are left, there- 
See statement, preceding page. 

fore, of new projects costing money: 

These three mean a capital outlay of $90,000,000 and a 
continuing annual cost of about $4,000,000. If all other rec- 
ommendations refer to routine which must happen anyway, 
why does the report treat them as recommendations instead 
of forecasts? 

Nowhere did my article mention "new projects costing 
money." On the contrary, in tabulating 375 recommenda- 
tions, I said, "Some gravely indict present methods and equip- 
ment; all presume experience as their basis; all involve the 
expenditure of energy, and, with one or two exceptions, ex- 
penditure of money." 

(i) The increase of certain teachers' salaries at a cost of 
$3,300,000, a project which had been discust by the Board of 
Education for two years and in support of which Superintendent 
Maxwell gives facts and figures covering ten printed pages, of 
which more later. 

(2) The plan for one-story buildings for blind and cripples 
based on the experience of Chicago and London. 

(3) The formation of a department of hygiene and the trans- 
fer of medical inspection from the Department of Health to the 
Board of Education, a project discust in two annual reports and 
supported by facts and figures occupying ten pages of the report. 

As shown later, the project was not properly supported by 
either facts or figures. 



Where are Mr. Allen's facts to substantiate his $25,000,000 
estimate, and where the justification for his inference that the 
City Superintendent's recommendations were not based on facts 
of experience? 

Where was the fact instinct of our school authorities, 
that they did not look before they asked this question? 

Mr. Allen further makes the charge in his article that the 
report of Superintendent Maxwell gives no facts to prove the 
necessity of transferring medical inspection to the Board of 
This demand was based on no authoritative record. 
My article reads, "Although New York had furnished inspira- 
tion to other cities through magazines and press articles, the 
school report shows not a statement of fact, not a table of 
work done." The next report for igo8 contains tables of 
work done, (pp. 138-139). Similar information might have been 
presented in the report under discussion. 

Education, or for passing a law compelling parents to secure 
medical service for their children, yet on page 109 of the 1906 
My article referred only to the 1907 report. The re- 
joinder misquotes and misrepresents the irrelevant 1906 re- 
port. 

report, the statement is made that in one school out of 150 cases 
of adenoid growth in the throat the parents of over seventy of 
these afflicted children would do nothing to procure their relief. 
Superintendent's qualification of the foregoing, p. no: 
"True, they gave their consent to have the necessary opera- 
tions performed in school by a prominent surgeon attached to 
a large hospital, who kindly volunteered for the work." 

There was no mobbing of these physicians. On the con- 
trary, the operations were followed by an ice cream party. 

and later on physicians of the Board of Health who proposed to 
relieve the children were mobbed by these parents. On page 442 
The mobbing was of other schools, at another time, by 
other parents. At least one riot was stopped by a wise prin- 
cipal who thought of singing instead of throwing mud at 
the health department. 

of the same report it is shown that during the year 1906 but 
78,401 pupils out of a total register of 559,000 were examined 
by the physicians of the health departments; that not a single 
pupil in the high schools was examined, while in the report for 
High schools are not mentioned. It should be remem- 
bered that although the schools had physical directors and 
the physical contact with needy children, the department of 
health, to its credit, took the initiative in calling the atten- 



tion of educators to physical needs that a proper system of 
reporting would have disclosed many years before. 

The school authorities could at any time in four years 
have made a serviceable eye test for all pupils. There, as in 
the teaching and practice of hygiene, the gap between their 
knowing and their doing is greater than the efficiency gap of 
the health department referred to by the rejoinder. 
1907, page 141, it is stated that in only 248 schools were any 
inspections made and that but one-third of the pupils in these 
Instead of one-third, less than one-fifth of the children 
were examined that year. 
schools were examined. In addition to the ten pages contributed 
by Dr. Maxwell on this subject, Dr. Gulick in the report of the 
Director of Physical Training, Appendix J of the Report of the 
City Superintendent, offers some five pages of reasons, based an 
his own experience and that of his teachers, why a special depart- 
ment of hygiene should be established. 

A line to line reading of the trifle over three pages (421- 
424) of Dr. Gulick's discussion of this subject shows that 
he does not have in mind the department of school hygiene 
desired by the superintendent. Far from making an argu- 
ment for transferring the work of the department of health 
to the department of education, Dr. Gulick asks for one medi- 
cal officer and says on page 424, "I do not contemplate the 
assigning of this officer to duties that are now being perform- 
ed by the department of health." 
During an eleven years' experience in the high schools of this 
city, in three different high schools, the writer has known of but 
one occasion where a physician of the health department was in 
the building, and that was for the purpose of vaccination. 

A recent report of the Bureau of Municipal Research supports 
the contention of Dr. Maxwell's report: "Examining the same 
children one inspector (of the Board of Health) found that 
thirteen children were suffering from pulmonary disease, another 
inspector found only two; one inspector found twenty-eight chil- 
dren suffering from malnutrition, another only ten." 

The report referred to is "A Bureau of Child Hygiene: 
Co-operative Studies and Experiments by the Department of 
Health of the City of New York and the Bureau of Munici- 
pal Research." 41 pp. plus illustrations arid inserts. On p. 26 
it says, "The obstacles to removing physical defects are not 
primarily those of unwillingness of parents." As my article 
stated, "the parents of 96 per cent, of 1400 children in 3 dif- 
ferent districts of New York City promised to act promptly 
when told the reason for acting." The department of health 
at once reorganized its school work and established a bureau 
22 



of child hygiene, with a program bound to succeed if school 
officials co-operate and publish results. At the time the 
rejoinder was written about 60 per cent, of the children ex- 
amined this school year and found to have defects had re- 
ceived treatment. Instead of mentioning this fact, the re- 
joinder harks back to igo6, when the work was still experi- 
mental, and when the school authorities were talking of free 
school meals rather than of removing physical defects and 
educating parents. 

The criticism is further made in the article that New York 
gives but part of her per capita cost of education. This is not 
a criticism but a quibble. The reason why the per capita cost 
is not mathematically accurate is that it does not pay to esti- 
mate and charge to the different activities the exact share of 
running expenses that should fall to each activity, as the super- 
intendent's salary, the janitor's salary, the cost of lighting and 
heating where the building is used jointly by day and evening 
schools, for recreation centers and for examinations, public lec- 
tures, etc. Such criticism is hardly worthy of a scientific ob- 
server who claims to be desirous of improving school reports. 

Many other cities find it worth while and easy to publish 
the right per capita. The U. S. Commissioner of Education 
and the U. S. Census Bureau consider that it pays to charge 
to different activities their share of running expenses, and 
this year are ascertaining for all cities of 30,000 and over 
what different school activities cost. The per capita pub- 
lished in the superintendent's report and used by him at pub- 
lic hearings injures the cause of education by under-stating 
the cost of high schools and many other features, by over- 
stating the cost of elementary schools, and by misrepresent- 
ing the relative cost of City College, Normal College, and 
high schools. 

On page 119 of this article we learn that "New York's Charter 
Revision Commission has not thought it strange or inefficient 
to have recommended changes in the school charter without read- 
ing school reports." The inference is that this is due to the 
This sentence followed the statement "questions of local 
policy and taxation are seldom settled (in any part of the 
United States) with reference to facts presented in school re- 
ports." 
futility of the report. The facts are that the Charter Revision 
Committee proposes to recommend sweeping changes in the edu- 
cational features of the charter, not only without reading the 
leport of the City Superintendent but also without attempting 
to get the point of view of the seventeen thousand teachers and 

23 



supervisors concerned. Because of their belief in the general 
The commission may not have attempted wisely because 
it could not get uncolored, impersonal evidence; but it did at 
least attempt to get the point of view of teachers and super- 
visors and all facts which they possessed. 

The rejoinder's assertions and implications regarding the 
Charter Revision Commission (not 'Committee') show the 
extreme difficulty of discussing any school question in New 
York City impersonally and with reference only to facts, 
principle of local self-government, w^ithout regard to the merits 
of this particular case, in the face of the almost unanimous oppo- 
sition of the teaching force of the city, they have recommended 
the abolition of the State protection of salaries, a system which, 
in the judgment of all competent observers, has given to New 
York City a class of teachers far superior to that which she had 
under the local control of salary system. And this vital change 
is being pushed thru by the Charter Revision Committee without 
a hearing, with little knowledge of the facts and with the evident 
approval of the writer of the article. A reading of the last report 
of the City Superintendent, in which this matter was fully dis- 
cust, might have saved them from this unwise step. 

The question of State protection is not "fully discussed." 
The report, p. 114, does say, "It put an end to an almost 
intolerable position with regard to teachers' salaries. * * * 
I sincerely trust that it will be maintained on the statute 
book as a defence against capricious changes in teachers' 
salaries until something better is provided." 
In the same paragraph we are told "How reports, when used, 
may influence local policy is illustrated in New York whose fiscal 
officers have recently, without discredit to themselves, cut the 
educational budget from $33,000,000 to $27,500,000, because 
special reports to the budget committee showed" certain irregu- 
larities which will be discust later in this article. 

The special reports referred to were probably those made by 
the Bureau of Municipal Research which thus, thru its secretary, 
claims the credit for the $5,500,000 reduction made "without 
discredit to the officials." Since the Bureau of Municipal Re- 
Please see statement by the Bureau's trustees. 
search claims the credit it must be held responsible for the 
great injury to the educational system wrought as a result of 
its activity. The article further states that "when given a 
chance at the taxpayers' hearing to defend their estimates, school 

24 



officers were without data to justify their protests." It is hard 
Instead I should have written "school officers were 
silent." I did not want to imply that officials of the 
board of education, possessing evidence that injury was 
about to be done the schools, would sit silent, 
to reahze that the Secretary of the Bureau of Municipal Re- 
search does not know that this statement is not true. At the 
taxpayers' hearing no attack on the educational budget was made, 
hence there was no occasion to make any public defense. What 
At the hearing on the tentative budget, the above reduc- 
tion was announced in cold type. For several hours the board 
of estimate listened to different city officials protest against 
reductions in their budget estimates. The only occasion for 
a public defence was that the mayor asked if they had any- 
thing to say. No attack from outside would have been per- 
mitted, because the citizens' hearing was closed. So flagrant 
was their failure that the Globe publicly criticised them for 
not having taken advantage of this opportunity. Effort was 
made to bring secret influence to bear upon fiscal officers, 
even though the occasion did not justify public explanation, 
are the facts? Of the $5,500,000 asked for and not granted, 
$3,300,000 was for a special increase of the salaries of certain 
This figure was $3,273,000, and includes salary increases 
for numerous extensions of service not granted, 
large classes of teachers. For two years, this matter of the in- 
adequate salaries paid to certain classes of teachers had en- 
gaged public attention, columns had been written about it in the 
newspapers, it had even occupied weeks of the time of the State 
Weeks of agitation publicly condemned by the superinten- 
dent of schools and by the board of education, and by the 
writer of the rejoinder. The facts used in this agitation are 
still in controversy. 
Legislature, and the veto of the Governor alone had prevented 
a large increase for certain of these teachers. The City Superin- 
tendent had devoted twenty pages of his 1907 report to this sub- 
These twenty pages were devoted, not to the proposi- 
tion before the board of estimate last fall, but against the 
proposition of equal pay for equal work. In the pages 
that are relevant to a proper salary schedule (130-132) he 
nowhere mentions the figure $3,300,000. On page 132 he says 
the city's finances do not permit an immediate increase, 
ject. A special committee of the Board of Education had after 
long deliberations twice recommended these increases amounting 
to $3,300,000 to the Board of Education and the Board of Edu- 
cation had in turn twice asked the Board of Estimate for the 
money. Every member of the Board of Estimate had received 

25 



from the various associations of teachers interested complete 
statements of the reasons making necessary the increase asked 
for, and in addition to this in September of both years represen- 
For 1908 this was $3,129,000, again including salary in- 
creases for a number of extensions of service not granted, 
tatives of these associations had made representations in person 
to the members of the Board of Estimate, and the special com- 
mittee of the Board of Education on the readjustment of teachers' 
salaries had consulted the members of the Board of Estimate. 

The superintendent criticised the Davis Law (p. 114) be- 
cause "drawn up by a legislative committee after conference 
only with representatives of different teachers' organizations, 
and without reference to an harmonious underlying scheme 
or plan." Far from approving this salary schedule, more than 
half the teachers actively opposed it, which fact was well 
known to all schoolmen. The facts necessary to a proper de- 
termination of teachers' salaries are still in controversy, and 
only recently Mayor McClellan appointed a committee con- 
sisting of Joseph H. Choate, Prof. J. B. Clark and William 
C. Brown, president of the New York Central, to get facts! 

It is generally conceded that had the panic of 1907 not come 
just when it did, the Board of Estimate would have granted 
the $3,300,000 asked for and the teachers would now be en- 
joying the increased salary. In October, 1908, the Board of 
No, not "generally conceded." This is some inside infor- 
mation which, of course, taxpayers ought to have possessed 
in 1907, and authority for which statement it is fair now to 
ask of the educational authorities. The figure should be 
$3,128,567, again including salary increases for extensions of 
service. 
Education a second time asked for $3,300,000 for the increase 
of teachers' salaries, but the continuance of the bad times and 
the fear of too greatly increasing the tax rate caused the second 
And because its principle was strongly opposed by more 
than half the teachers, and the public left in the dark as to 
the facts. 
refusal of the amount asked for. Tho the total budget was in- 
creased from $143,000,000 to $154,000,000, the teachers, as usual, 
What possible excuse is there for saying $143,000,000 in- 
stead of $143,572,000, and $154,000,000 instead of $156,545,000? 
If "nearest millions" almost explains the first, how about the 
$2,545,000 shortage in the second? Not until we have ade- 
quate accounting and reporting will the public know whether 
all school business is conducted with such inaccuracy as char- 
acterizes this rejoinder, on which several of the school sys- 
tem's highest priced employees and officers collaborated. 

26 



were the ones to suffer the cut. Whether the refusal of these 
increases was a credit or discredit to the Board of Estimate is a 
matter of opinion, but the cutting out of this item was not due, 
as Mr. Allen states, to the failure of the Board of Education to 
present properly the reasons for the increase in its budget. The 
Auditor of the Board of Education had prepared a printed bud- 
get of 458 pages, showing how every dollar was to be spent. 

This statement shows where, not how, every dollar is to 
be spent. It asks for so many things that the board of edu- 
cation does not expect to get and does not want, that a mere 
appearance of an item in this budget can hardly be said "to 
present properly the reasons for the increase in its budget." 

The $3,300,000 was applied for on the ground that with the 
present salaries enough capable teachers could not be obtained 
Throughout this paragraph the rejoinder confuses 
"enough" with "capable" and "enough capable." Refusing 
the grant of $3,300,000 had no effect whatever upon the num- 
ber of teachers who could be engaged. That large sum was 
requested to increase the salaries of existing teachers, plus 
amounts necessary to increase salaries for certain teachers 
not allowed. The results here enumerated relate chiefly to 
the number, rather than to the quality of teachers. Increas- 
ing the salaries of the present teaching force of the DeWitt 
Clinton High School will not release any funds for engaging 
regular teachers instead of substitutes. Increasing the sal- 
aries of 10,000 present teachers will not release funds to 
correct "a scarcity of teachers." The board of education 
has had repeated opportunities through reports and public 
hearings to state clearly and convincingly to taxpayers what 
injuries, if any, are being suffered by pupils because of in- 
sufficient salaries for teachers, or because of insufficient num- 
ber of teachers. The most recent statement from educational 
authorities is that of the rejoinder, 
to carry on the work of the schools properly. As a consequence 
of the refusal of the Board of Estimate to grant this amount, 
there is today a scarcity of teachers and the pupils suffer thereby. 
The present appropriation is not large enough to enable the 
Board of Education to fill vacancies as they arise. The schools 
are forced, therefore, to rely on substitutes; for example, one- 
fifth of the teaching force of the De Witt Clinton High School 
is made up of substitutes; in an annex to another high school 
with ten teachers the only regular teacher is the teacher in charge, 
and this same scarcity prevails in nearly every other high school. 
Will Mr. Allen still claim for the Bureau of Municipal Research 
the credit for this condition? 

27 



We have given the real facts as to $3,300,000 of the $5,500,000 
cut out of the budget of the Board of Education. What are the 
facts as to the remaining $2,200,000 denied the Board of Educa- 
tion "without discredit to the Board of Estimate" as a result of 
the activities of this same Bureau? Of the $5,500,000 applied 
for but not granted, $4,490,218.79 was to be a portion of the 
general fund for the paying of teachers' salaries, and the remain- 
der was a part of the special fund for other purposes than teach- 
ers' salaries. Inasmuch as Mr. Allen confines his attack to the 
general fund with which the City Superintendent is more imme- 
diately concerned, hence possibly the reason for the attack, we 
shall take up the deficiency in the general fund. 

Of the eight times specified on page 120, where the board 
o£ education budget had misstated the facts, four re- 
ferred to the special fund, and not to the general fund. All 
placed responsibility squarely upon the board of education. 
The city superintendent is not mentioned. 
Deducting $3,273,163.52, the amount needed for salary in- 
creases, from the $4,490,218.79 of the general fund, there re- 
mains $1,217,055.27 cut off by the Board of Estimate "without 
discredit to itself," therefore by reasonable inference unnecessar- 
ily applied for by the Board of Education. 

However necessarily applied for, these items should have 
been supported by such facts that they could not have been 
cut out, if such facts existed. 
The chief deductions were: 

(i) $168,340 to fill vacancies in the elementary schools. 
On May 31, 1908, when estimates were made for the budget 
of 1908-9 there were vacancies in elementary schools calling 
for a salary fund of $168,340 for the year. This item was 
asked for and not granted. 

(2) $385,210.49 needed for additional elementary teachers. 
The normal yearly increase in the necessary activities of the 
Board of Education, owing to the continuous increase in popu- 
lation, is about 5 per cent. This therefore naturally entails an 
For the last four years ending June, 1908, the average in- 
crease in register— all schools— has been less than 4 per cent., 
having been 4 3-10 per cent, in 1907-8 and 4 i-io per cent, in 
1906-7; in average attendance much less than 4 per cent.; in 
net enrollment 3.63 per cent. Impossible to learn for elemen- 
tary schools only. But it would be smaller than for all 
schools, because much smaller than for high schools (7.45) 
and kindergartens (11.06). 
approach to 5 per cent, increase in the amount required for the 

28 



teachers' salaries, somewhat less than 5 per cent., since the 
new teachers will receive less than the average salary of those 
already in the system. 

The rejoinder fails to compute what this difference is. 

The result would go far to explain the two reductions last 

mentioned. 

Allowing the 5 per cent, increase in the 
fund for 1907-8 of $15,629,168, we have $781,458. The Board 
applied for $762,460 and received but $377,249.51, an amount 
less than was needed by $385,210.49. Adding this to the amount 
needed to fill vacancies, we have $553,550.49, which Mr. Allen 
probably regards as saved to the City of New York since the 
schools are running without the necessary increase in the num- 
ber of teachers. This is the usual mistake of the man who is 
not familiar with the actual operation of schools. We save, he 
thinks, only when we obtain results with less expenditure. The 

Equal results with less expenditure — yes. 
cutting off of this $553,550.49 from the salary fund of the ele- 
mentary schools means ( i ) larger classes, 60 or more, and over- 
42, not 60, on average register, a trifle over 30 per teacher 
on average attendance, according to the report for the year 
ending July 31st, 1908. To report just where classes of 60 
exist is an easy way of securing more funds, 
crowded and worn-out teachers; (2) the use of inexperienced 
substitutes instead of regular teachers. The pupils get poorer 
teaching in either case. Is this saving the city money? 

(3) $105,694 saved in the salaries of high school teachers. 
The amount asked for the general fund for high schools was 
$2,398,951. The Board of Estimate granted $2,293,256.99, a 
deficiency of $105,694. The amount asked for was based on the 
normal increase in registration which from 1906-7 to 1907-8 was 
from 22,931 to 25,264, or 10.2 per cent., whereas the increase in 
the registration of February, 1909, over February, 1908, is from 
28,209 to 34,363, an increase of 22 per cent. The high schools 
are suffering from a double difficulty as the result of these re- 
ports to the Board of Estimate: First, the failure to raise sal- 
aries has cut off the supply of candidates for positions in the high 

Cut down from what to what? 
schools ; secondly, the scaling down of the estimate to the amount 
of $105,000 has made it impossible to secure the additional 
teachers needed for the increased registration of pupils. The 
result is again, as in the elementary sdhools, too large classes, 

29 



If these assertions can be proved and traced to budget 
cuts, it will be desirable but new information to New York 
City. The average number of pupils to teachers in high 
schools, based on average register, is 23; based on average 
attendance, 20. If, indeed, elementary schools have classes 
of 60, is there not perhaps a trifle margin of increase in high 
school pupils per teacher without serious injury to education? 

too many teaching periods, the use of untrained substitutes, 
sometimes no teacher for days at a time, with the resulting loss 
to the pupil. If the force of teachers in the De Witt Clinton 
High School be cut down one-half, we could still keep the school 
open, but we should not be teaching the boys. 

Fourthly, $149,000 decrease in the fund for special teachers. 
The Board of Education asked $679,913 for teachers of special 
branches; they received $530,915, a deficiency of $149,000; an- 
other saving, but at whose expense? 

At present there are but thirty-one teachers of physical train- 
ing for the forty-six school districts, — that is one to 452 teachers. 
The Board asked for one to each district, 46 in all. Even then 

The estimate for 1909 (pp. 62-63) asks not for 46 but 
for 20 women teachers of physical training and 9 men, a total 
of 29. If failure to grant the additional appropriations means 
that "work is languishing and gymnasiums are not used as 
they should be," that fact is not brought out in the report 
of the city superintendent of schools for last year, dated De- 
cember 31st, 1908, more than two full months after the al- 
lowance for physical training teachers was announced. The 
summary of recommendations does not mention this need 
(pp. 162-163) ; nor is this condition divulged on pages 431 to 
439. signed September 30th, 1908, by Dr. Gulick. 

each special teacher of physical training would still be responsible 
for the physical training of 305 classes. The result of the failure 
to grant the additional appropriation is that the work is languish- 
ing and gymnasiums are not used as they should be. In like 
manner additional teachers of shop work and cooking who were 
asked for were cut off, and several shops and kitchens which 
were erected during the year are lying idle for want of teachers. 

Additional special teachers in drawing are needed in Brook- 
lyn and Queens, where the area of the districts is large and 
where there are many small schools lying far apart, and where 
as a consequence a large part of the time of the teachers is spent 

30 



in going from school to school. The cutting out of $149,000 has 

made it impossible to remedy these conditions. 

If we put together the conditions that the rejoinder says 
resulted from a reduction of this $149,000, we are astounded 
at the service which this amount would have bought. No 
one could gather from the superintendent's report for 1908, 
dated December 31st, 1908, two full months after these bud- 
get reductions, that conditions were as serious as they are 
here reported by a high school principal. Among the sum- 
mary of recommendations (p. 162) no mention is made of 
these conditions. Under the heading "Need of More Kinder- 
gartens, Workshops and Kitchens," (p. 103 ff.) these condi- 
tions are not mentioned. On June 15th, 1909, the board had 
a balance of $180,233.25 in its trust funds available to correct 
such conditions. 

(5) An appropriation of $4,920 was asked for a school for the 
blind ; it was refused. The blind are as yet untaught. Is this a 
credit to the Board of Estimate? 

The rejoinder is careful to say "as yet untaught" rather 
than "as yet unprovided for." At the time of writing the 
board of education had appropriated $5,000 for the blind. 
Where did it get this money? The Globe said next day "from 
other appropriations." 

(6) $16,950 was asked for three day schools for truants, to 
be organized on the model of the disciplinary school in P. S. 
120, which has proved so successful. The money was refused, 
and the chronic cases of truancy and incorrigible conduct are 
still wasting the time of the teachers, the principals, and the boys 
themselves in the elementary schools. 

Writing December 31st, 1908, no mention of this condi- 
tion is made by the city superintendent. Nothing is said 
about it in recommendations. The rejoinder's statement 
would have been very opportune at the taxpayers' hearings. 

(7) The allowance for evening schools was decreased $43,- 
000. This means of course fewer schools this year. 

$40,590, not $43,000. (Estimate p. 83 ; Budget, p. 60.) Fewer 
schools this year than might have been, not fewer schools 
than last year. The evening high appropriation increased 
$13,400. The evening elementary, $7,300. 

(8) Lastly we come to the question of vacation schools, recrea- 
tion centers, playgrounds, and baths. The Board of Education 
asked for $441,752. It received $175,000, which was $40,000 less 

So far as anybody could tell from the board of education 
budget, there was no serious plan to spend this total. There 

31 



was no expectation of getting it. The budget professed to 
have actually organized for 1909 activities costing over $240,- 
000. At that time they had actually organized on a supposed 
basis of $215,000. 

than the amount actually spent last year. The Committee of the 
Board of Education having charge of these activities thought 
it wise to treble its work and had planned with these additional 
funds, if granted, to open every playground in the afternoon 
and the shops and kitchens every afternoon and every Saturday 
morning. The additional amount asked was large, but the benefit 
to be gained was very great in keeping tens of thousands of 
children off the streets and engaged in healthful and profitable 
pursuits. If the city is too poor to do this, then the failure of 
the Board of Estimate to grant the funds asked was without dis- 
credit to them, but on no other supposition. 

These activities are potentially too valuable to be based 
upon misinformation or lack of information. 

School officials raised a hue and cry about an alleged 
reduction of $40,000, whereupon numerous newspaper editor- 
ials were written under the impression that there was a cur- 
tailment of $40,000. The superintendent's report for 1908 
repeats the error, as did the board of education, in asking for 
special revenue bonds in March and June, 1909. Trust funds 
have been available this year as last for these purposes 
throughout the agitation based on misstatements of fact. 
With the intention of using these trust funds, vacation 
schools, etc., were organized beyond the budget allowance. 

It received $184,504 or $496 less than it had last year, 
and $28,162 less than it actually spent last year. (Budget, p. 
60, $175,000; p. 58, $9,504.) Far from trebling its work, it 
wanted to add 10 to its 27 vacation schools, 6 to its 95 vaca- 
tion playgrounds, 6 to its 28 evening recreation centers. Far 
from wanting to open every playground in the afternoon, it 
asked for money to open 49. The budget does not explain, 
says nothing about shops and kitchens every afternoon and 
every Saturday morning, and says nothing about the number 
of children who would be benefited. 

For five years attempts have been made to stampede the 
public of New York to secure funds for recreation centers 
on the plea that vacation schools keep children off the 
streets, and give them profitable pursuits. Assuming that 
official statements from the department of education were 
made in good faith, a group of social workers appeared be- 
fore the board of estimate and apportionment to request 
funds for vacation schools. Dr. E. T. Devine had charge of 
the hearing. When asked by Comptroller Grout what as- 
surance could be given that if additional money was voted 

32 



for vacation schools it would be used for vacation schools, 
Dr. Devine quoted a letter written by the then president of 
the board o£ education, Henry N. TifFt, pledging use for the 
purpose named. The money was procured, but was not used 
for the purpose named, although from that same general 
fund money was found that year for salary increases not 
mentioned at budget time. 
It has been shown how it was possible for the Board of Esti- 
mate to reduce the budget of the Board of Education by the 
sum of $4,411,365, and what the consequences have been and are 
to be in work not done. Does the discredit lie with the body of 
trustees of the public good who saw the need and asked for the 
funds ? Or with the body which refused the funds ? Or with the 
body — the Bureau of Municipal Research — which, Mr. Allen in- 
sinuates, made the representations that led to the refusal? 

Mr. Allen further attempts to discredit the Board of Education 
by charging: 

(i) "That year after year the Board of Education in its esti- 
mates had been overstating by hundreds of thousands of dollars 
the amount needed for additional teachers." 

On May 22d, I asked the superintendent of schools if, 
in stating the cost of engaging the additional teachers neces- 
sary for the additional registration, the board of education 
estimated the "saving that would result from the retirement 
of higher priced teachers who, according to experience, might 
be expected to leave the system during 1909," and if the 
board of education in its estimate for the year 1908 gave 
this expected reduction. No answer to' date. 

An impartial investigation of the budgets laid before the 
Board of Estimate and Apportionment would show that this 
statement is untrue. The fact that all the money asked was not 
granted is no proof to the contrary. On the other hand, the fact 
that at no time since 1902 has the Board of Education been able, 
because of lack of funds, to fill vacancies in high schools, elemen- 
tary schools, and kindergartens, as they arise — that the vacancies 
made and the new classes organized between December and 
September of each year are filled for the most part by substitutes 
until the first of October or November — and the further fact that 
the Board has in some thousands of cases been unable to divide 
classes of abnormally large register, while each year the appro- 
priation is exhausted — are proof positive that the appropriations 
have been insufiicient and that the demands of the Board of 
Education have not been exorbitant. 

33 



The appropriations might be insufficient and the aggre- 
gate demands of the board not exorbitant, and it still be true 
that the board of education overstated the amount required 
for teachers to take care of additional registration. 

(2) "That funds had been diverted contrary to written and 
verbal pledges." In making this charge Mr. Allen does not state 
that the Board of Education of New York City is a corporate 
body of trustees ; that it has no legal or moral right to bind itself 
as to the disposition of its general fund, nor has any other body 
the right to make such a demand upon it; that its one duty is 
to use the general fund intrusted to it for the best interests of 
the schools of New York City, meeting each need as it arises as 
best it may with the funds at its command. If tiherefore in its 
judgment it seems wise to transfer $30,000 to the fund for vaca- 
tion schools, it is not only its right but its duty so to do. It and 
it alone is responsible to the people for the conduct of the 

schools. 

If the necessity be conceded, it does not follow that the 

board of education should have broken its pledges rather 
than go to the board of estimate, as do other departments, 
requesting authorization to depart from those pledges. 

It is very difficult to meet on common ground educators 
who thus flagrantly proclaim that a pledge made by a board 
of education is not binding upon it. President Winthrop said, 
in the autumn of 1907, that he did consider a pledge made by 
him and his finance committee as binding. The board of 
estimate voted for teachers' salaries last year $570,000 
more than the three mill tax, and the year before voted 
$652,000 more. No one would seriously question its right 
to impose the conditions upon which it shall vote an excess 
over the compulsory tax. (In May, 1909, the board of edu- 
cation denied that it transferred $30,000 from other parts 
of the general fund to the vacation school fund). 

(3) "That of $18,000 given for additional attendance officers, 
only $600 was used for that purpose." This was simply an exer- 
cise of the Board's rightful discretion, — it lacked sufficient funds 
to pay the teachers' salaries. It was forced to take $50,000 
from the High School Bonus Fund and the Training School 
Trust Fund. To further make up the deficiency still remaining, 
it availed itself of the $17,400, inasmuch as the City Superintend- 
ent had nominated only five new truant officers late in the year, 
in view of the lack of funds for salaries of teachers already em- 

" -^ ■ The board of education did not avail itself of $17,400, 

nor is it true that at the time he refused to nominate addi- 
tional truant officers, the superintendent did so because of a 

34 



"lack o£ funds for salaries of teachers already employed." 
We have already seen that $28,000 was transferred for recrea- 
tion centers, etc. What reasons were actually given cannot 
be proved until the original minutes are made public. 

So determined was the apologist to make out a case that 
he did not even ascertain how much was spent for truant 
officers. So he innocently subtracts $600 mentioned by me 
(the case August, 1908, while the budget was being dis- 
cussed). Evidently his informants forgot that it costs some- 
thing to pay for "only five new truant officers late in the 
year." 

(4) "That $7,cx)o given to increase particular clerical salaries 
had been distributed among a larger number late in the year so 
as to effect an annual salary increase of $20,000." Mr. Allen in 
his investigations of the city departments must have discovered 
that every one of these salary increases, after being adopted by 
resolution of the Board of Education, had then to be approved 
later by the Civil Service Commission, the Controller, the Board 
of Aldermen, and the Board of Estimate before the increase could 
be added to the pay-roll, and that any evasion or subterfuge was 
impossible. 

Not one of the increases referred to followed that course. 
It is difficult to understand how responsible educators could 
have made such a statement. 

(5) "That money was asked for the rent of a building not 
used since 1907." 

The amount involved was $600 in a budget of $33,000,000, 
and was due to a mistake of a clerk in adding to the list of leases 
in Richmond one that had expired. Is that a good reason for 
diminishing a budget by five and one-half millions? 

Is it not reason enough for wondering whether the board 
of education takes steps to know whether information sub- 
mitted to it by its subordinates is correct or incorrect, and 
whether the budget contains a number ' of other plausible 
items for spending which the board of education has no plan? 
The budget receives less official attention than did this 
rejoinder which abounds in errors that certainly discredit the 
educational authorities more than could any statement by an 
"outsider." 

(6) "That it was costing from three to five times as much 
per pupil or per room for repairs of furniture and pianos, as 
well as of buildings, in the Bronx and Queens as in Brooklyn 
and Manhattan." This difference in cost is simply an illustration 
of the importance of taking the right basis of comparison between 
schools and boroughs. The number of pupils or number of 

35 



Per Sitting 

Ordi- Furni- 
nary ture 
$.77 $-256 


Repair Cost 
Total 

( Si^ ^ 
Pianos Mtems/ 

$.008 $1.65 


.73 


•095 


.06 


I.16 


.88 


.144 


.005 


1.65 


3.33 


.359 


.006 


5-41 



rooms is not the proper basis for repairs but the relative condi- 
tion of the buildings in the various boroughs. In the Bronx, but 
more notably in Queens, there are a large number of small old 
Every, time they have been asked to explain this discrep- 
ancy, the educational authorities point out small old build- 
ings, or small wooden buildings. President Winthrop gave 
this explanation last year to the Greater New York Tax- 
payers' Conference, which assured him that it wished to sup- 
port all justifiable requests. That is the only reason that has 
ever been assigned publicly. To test this plausible reason, 
the Bureau of Municipal Research has analyzed the repair 
cost for buildings erected since 1900 and classified as brick- 
stone in the board of education's report for the years 1906 
and 1907: 

Average 
Sittings 

Two No. 

Years Schools 

Manhattan 36,260 15 

Brooklyn 48,388 29 

The Bronx i7,399 " 

Queens 5,576 6 

buildings used for a scattered population. The pianos and furni- 
ture in the^se buildings are also old. This condition comes down 
Again, so determined to defend his superiors was the 
apologist that no analysis was made for pianos and furni- 
ture. Therefore a plausible defence, although the facts show 
that I was wrong in stating that pianos cost from 3 to 5 times 
as much per pupil and per room. My article was written 
before other facts were available than the President's admis- 
sion of a discrepancy due to "small old wooden buildings." Dr. 
Tildsley had access to records for 3 full years. 
from the days prior to the consolidation into Greater New York 
when the small towns and villages of Queens County did not 
provide so substantially for the schools as did the more densely 
populated cities of New York and Brooklyn. Naturally a high 
school in New York of fire-proof construction but three years 
old and registering 2,200 pupils, needs a far less expenditure for 
repairs per capita than four high schools in Queens housed in 
old buildings originally used for grammar schools and which 
combined have the same registry as the one Manhattan school. 
Comparing the small, old Stuyvesant High School in 
Manhattan, brick-stone, built in 1865, with the Bryant High, 
brick-stone, built in Queens 1902-05, the per sitting repair 
costs are reported by the board of education as follows: 

Total 
Ordi- Furni- / Six \ 

nary ture Pianos Vltems/ 

Stuyvesant (small— old) I4.70 |o.47 $0.70 I7.95 

Bryant (new — larger) 8.34 1.17 .03 ii-95 

36 



If the Secretary of the Board of Municipal Research had been 
longer in New York and familiar with the condition of its 
schools, he would not make the mistake of indicting the Board of 
Education because of a different per capita cost of repairs in dif- 
ferent boroughs. 

The indictment against the board of education is not be- 
cause of a different per capita cost of repairs in different 
boroughs, but because of an unexplained difference, a mis- 
represented difference, and a policy that permits subordin- 
ates to misstate the truth or to make sweeping statements 
without first undertaking to learn what the truth is. 

So much may be said in answering the criticisms of the New 
York reports. We do not believe that Mr. Allen realized the 
impression that would be made by his article upon the readers 
of the Educational Review. It is not thinkable that Mr. Allen 
deliberately misstated facts. The explanation probably lies in 
Is the same true of educators who prepared the re- 
joinder, and whose own records refute them as citations 
show? 
the temperament of Mr. Allen and the exigencies of his present 
position. The Bureau of Municipal Research has acquired on 
the one hand an over-developed critical faculty of a rather de- 
structive kind, on the other it is the prophet of salvation thru 
fact seeking, fact collecting, and fact arranging. It is inclined 

Please see introduction by the Bureau's trustees, 
to lay the emphasis on system rather than men, on bookkeeping 
rather than personality, and therefore Mr. Allen in the spirit of 
his institution has noted slight discrepancies, has enlarged upon 
them, has expected his own system of making reports to be fol- 
lowed, and hence has given us this most pessimistic article on 
school reports. 

It is not thinkable that Mr. Allen's methods will ever be 
substituted for straightforward reports in New York or any 
other city. Were there any educational system whose policy 
should be determined by substituting mere figures for the wisdom 
of experience, by forming destructive inductions from isolated 
facts, and by accepting half truths, more mischievous than lies, 
for whole truths, in such a system Mr. William H. Allen's system 
of reporting would be highly appropriate. 

John L. Tildsley 

De Witt Clinton High School 
New York 

37 



Will the writer of the rejoinder inform the public if the 
city superintendent of schools, or the president of the board of 
education, or the auditor, or any committee chairman saw his 
article before submission to the Educational Review ? Is he 
willing to publish their names? Is he willing to publish the 
names of school officials who either gave to him or helped 
him obtain his data? Will school officials send this reply 
to those who received reprints of his article from school 
officials? 

CONCLUSION 

The New York schools can not, if they will, prevent 
progress in school reporting. Other cities now have infor- 
mation which we are not able to obtain. Our own taxpayers 
know that there is a way of obtaining information. The 
facts given above prove that the writer of the article and 
any superior officers who may have collaborated in its prep- 
aration, have not given us the benefit of "the wisdom of ex- 
perience" or have not been averse to "half truths, more mis- 
chievous than lies." 

The time is not far distant when New York's system 
of reporting school results will be modern and efficient. Then 
the methods of statesmanship, instead of those of the poli- 
tician and of agitation will be employed, by subordinates 
wishing advancement, by the city superintendent of schools 
or by the board of education itself wishing funds for justifi- 
able purposes. 

Nothing could more clearly establish the truth of every 
proposition in my article than the first recommendation in 
the superintendent's report for 1908, issued just about the 
time that this rejoinder was written, namely, that "an assist- 
ant trained in making statistical investigations should be ap- 
pointed on the staff of the city superintendent's office." 
From this recommendation it is but a step to a demand for 
records that currently tell the truth clearly and with a saving 
of teachers' and principals' time. Facts that should be cur- 
rently reported by school authorities are now being sought 
by the Russell Sage Foundation at great expense. There is 
no better way of befriending the school system of New York 
City than to demand efficient methods for recording school 
experience, and for separating competent from incompetent, 
practicable from impracticable, wasteful from economical. 



38 



Reprinted from the Educational Review, New York, February, 1909. 
Copyright, igoq, by Educational Review Publishing Co. 



I 

SCHOOL REPORTS AS THEY ARE ^ 

The personality tablets and the educational experience that 
may be discovered in school reports, even as they are, offer a 
splendid field for some progressive magazine wishing to give 
the whole country the benefit of pioneer work and pioneer 
thought by makers of school reports. Whether complete or 
incomplete, perfunctory or earnest, with or without illumi- 
nating matter, the formal statements of school superintend- 
ents to their communities constitute our richest mine of edu- 
cational data — the fragmentary materials of research with 
which scientific study of school problems must begin. They 
tell much more of the elasticity, open-mindedness, and instinct 
of workmanship among educational leaders than could Who's 
who, or a gallery of portraits, — far more, too, of the obstacles 
and opportunities that confront those leaders than do treatises 
on adolescence, or histories of education. 

To discover what school reports really are is a task far 
more interesting than the subject implies. In June the Edu- 
cational Review asked me to prepare two articles on 
School reports as they are, and School reports as they ought 
to he, " from the standpoint of the Bureau of Municipal 
Research, and its general program for effective publicity." 
Dr. Elizabeth Kemper Adams, whose courses in education at 
Smith College include field study of educational administra- 
tion, became so interested in the contemplated examination 
that she gave to it her summer vacation, thus making possible 

'Written in collaboration with Dr. Elizabeth K. Adams, Smith College. 



I lo Educational Review [February 

a more detailed analysis than would otherwise have been 
possible.^ Two graduate students, Miss Beavers of Adelphi 
and Miss Allen of Columbia, have since assisted. School 
reports are full of two essential ingredients of sensation 
and inspiration, — opportunities seized and opportunities lost. 
After living in New York thru five years when schools and 
public alike have suffered because school problems were discust 
on theoretical and personal grounds, just as if New York were 
without experience, I have come to believe that there is prob- 
ably no need today in the educational world so pressing as 
that for adequate recording and reporting of school experi- 
ence. 

Desire to better school reports is general, for eighty-six 
replies were received from cities and forty from states, in 
response to an invitation for suggestion and criticism sent to 
the superintendents of the hundred cities having the largest 
population, and to all state superintendents. The present 
article, and a second, — School reports as leading educators 
wovdd have them, — are based upon these answers, and upon 
an analysis of seventy-two city reports.^ 

For exhibits of best things and of weaknesses in school 
reports, for a story of repeated efforts by the National 
Education Association to improve reports, for a list of ques- 
tions never answered and occasionally answered, and a study 

' Each report was read from cover to cover, all statements of fact, all recom- 
mendations, and the essential elements of make-up being listed. Financial 
items were not scheduled because the Teachers College studies have already 
made clear the deficiencies in this particular, and the United States Com- 
missioner of Education is now gathering information that will lay the 
basis for future complete and uniform financial data. The number of 
items tabulated (3,500) was so great that it has not seemed desirable to 
detail them, especially as their lesson can be fairly shown by tables for 
ten large cities : New York, Qeveland, St. Louis, Buffalo, Boston, Baltimore, 
Pittsburg, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia. The last-named city 
is not fairly represented, because the superintendent sent us his own report 
without the tabular matter on which it is based. 

' Much that is here said of city reports is not true of state reports, which 
have made greater progress in securing both uniformity and completeness. 
Because the accuracy of uniform and elaborate tables may still be ques- 
tioned, and because the attainment of ideals for state reports depends upon 
improvement in reports for cities where educational problems are most 
acute, the question of state reporting, except for purposes of illustration, 
is left for future treatment. 



1909] School reports as they are 1 1 1 

in detail of the New York report, the reader is referred to 
School reports and school efUciency. I want here to con- 
sider certain aspects of reporting that especially concern the 
parent, taxpayer, press, and outside student of school questions. 
The cost of printing school reports gives an idea of the 
educational results we are entitled to expect and to require. 
The following table shows that the present cost bears no 
fixt relation to population or school enrollment : , ' ! 

City Population Copies Published Cost 

New York 3,437>ooo 3,000 $i,750 

St. Louis 575,000 2,000 1,600 

Baltimore 509,000 500 260 

Buffalo 352,000 3,000 1,000 

St. Paul 163,000 1,500 2,000 

Rochester 163,000 2,000 500 

Kansas City, Mo 164,000 2,000 1,095 

Providence 176,000 1,500 325 

Lowell 95,000 10,000 420 

Albany 94,000 1,000 205 

Jersey City 206,000 2,000 800 

Louisville 205,000 1,200 300 

Lynn, Mass 69,000 3,000 1,000 

Seattle 81,000 1,000 88 

Columbus 126,000 1,000 600 

Worcester * 118,000 1,500 132 

Duluth 53,000 1,000 600 

Elizabeth, N. J 53,ooo 000 000 

Pittsburgh 322,000 1,500 299 

Los Angeles 102,000 2,000 350 

Houston 45,000 1,500 500 

Covington, Ky 43,000 200 160 

Manchester, N. H 57,050 500 65 

Birmingham 38,000 3,000 1,000 

To produce the sixty-two city reports for which facts were 
received cost $25,000, the annual income on $600,000. To 
print twenty-six state reports cost $47,500. Including the 
value of labor given to compilation, preparation, proof-reading, 
editing, our annual school reports, state and city, represent the 
income on an investment of probably $5,000,000, or more. 

The number of reports published has a bearing upon the 
effectiveness, make-up, and audience. Indianapolis has had no 
report since 1902. Elizabeth and Des Moines hope to print 
reports next year. St. Louis prints 2,000, but has a mailing 



1 1 2 Educational Review [February 

list of only 400. Lowell, with a population of 95,000, prints 
as many copies as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, with 
a combined population of over 5,000,000. Birmingham, with 
38,000 population, prints and distributes 3,000, more than 
Baltimore, New Orleans, New Haven, Paterson, Richmond, 
and Trenton combined, with an aggregate population of 1,200- 
000. Cambridge, the home of fair Harvard, and Minneapolis, 
likewise a center of learning, together mail 1,600 copies, for a 
combined population of 300,000. New Haven, beneficiary of 
Yale's atmosphere for two centuries, prints only 500. What 
does it mean that in New York the Board of Education, spend- 
ing from $30,000,000 to $40,000,000 a year, has declined on 
grounds of economy to print enough reports, or even abstracts 
for all teachers, and, including its out-of-town mailing list, 
prints but 3,000 copies? 

The make-up of reports proves the need for better technique 
in editing, typesetting, binding, etc. Of seventy-two super- 
intendents, only eighteen give an index; only eighteen employ 
black face type for emphasis or clearness, while only nine 
have even those unsatisfactory tables of contents by pages 
which discourage reference. Seven print the name and date 
on the back of the report, a very important little thing when 
a library shelf contains more than one report. Indentation, 
summaries, percentages, diagrams, are so seldom and so spar- 
ingly used that one wonders whether authors had in mind 
their use by either students or a public wishing light on school 
problems. New York City's report of 663 pages has a table 
of contents with no cross-references and with no subdivisions 
whatever of 500-odd pages written by associate superintend- 
ents. Contrast with this one letter of Cleveland's alphabetical 
index : 

Improving school conditions 44 

Increased effectiveness of the Teachers' Institute 47 

Increased salaries for teachers in elementary schools 44 

Increased defective schools 59 

Indigent books, 14 ; new policy determined, 22 ; restriction of 

privilege, 22 ; results 23 

Industrial education, extending, 50; credit course in applied arts 

established, 53 ; evening trade schools, 52 ; high school manual 



1909] School reports as they are 113 

training course revised, 54; revision and extension of elementary 

manual training work, 52 ; The Technical High school 51 

Industrial education, see also Technical High school. 

Inspiration of education conventions 50 

Instruction, cost of SO 

Interest, coupons for 165 

Altho nearly thirty years ago the National Education 
Association requested that all reports begin with summaries, 
few, as yet, have such summaries, and those given are not 
uniform, are incomplete, and often confusing. What might 
be put into a summary will be discust in the next article. Suf- 
fice it to say that, generally speaking, it would be possible to 
tell five times as much in one-half the space now used in city 
reports. For example, New York City uses a page of over 
six inches to set forth the following facts : 

License Sought No. Applica- No. Granted No. Re- 

tions fused 

Ungraded class licenses 37 9 28 

Substitute licenses 1,741 1,585 156 

Licenses to teach in vacation 

schools, etc. 3,108 2,538 570 

Licenses to teach in evening 

schools 4,881 3,513 1,368 



Totals 9,767 7,645 2,122 

After setting up a special total for each of these items, the 
New York report reads thus : " The total number of persons 
examined for the various grades and kinds of licenses desig- 
nated by the Board of Education on the recommendation of the 
Board of Superintendents was 13,494. The total number of 
licenses was 10,086. The total number of applicants who 
failed was 3,408." Two such tables, not condensed, are among 
four tables properly condensed. Much space is taken for long 
sentences to the effect that " the following table will show," 
etc., etc., or " the above table shows," etc., etc. 

Few reports show any definite plan : many being a jumble of 
fact, school history, educational discussions, etc. A pleasing 
contrast is the report of Cincinnati's superintendent, who ex- 
plains the scope and plan of his reports, and logically develops it. 



1 14 Educational Review [February 

How far are defects of make-up and the small number of 
copies issued due to indefiniteness of the audience which super- 
intendents are conscious of addressing? Fifty-two cities re- 
port that budgets are not publicly discust. Of 1,000 recom- 
mendations made in seventy-two reports, few seem to have 
been addrest to the people who pay the bills for carrying 
them out. Dissimilarity in language and method of reporting 
implies that other superintendents are not the audience. Lack 
of technique and of apparent interest in presentation suggests 
that trustees are not invariably aimed at. Altho sixty 
cities send reports to teachers, few impart information to, or 
invite suggestions from, the teaching staff. Superintendents 
seldom try to justify themselves to themselves, for few reports 
are accounts of stewardship : efficiency of system, officers, 
teachers, supervising staff, or of teaching and business methods 
is not shown; in fact, the not-done, the not-yet-done, the 
partial failure are rarely mentioned. Here and there are evi- 
dences that information is intended for general consumption. 
Erie, Pa., keeps available for ready reference all newspaper 
accounts bearing upon the conduct of the public schools. 
Milwaukee's superintendent urges more publicity of school 
matters, " to work up interest in schools and to get the best 
professional personnel on the board." Utica advises the great- 
est publicity of board expenditures. 

Failure to picture the superintendents' audience is indicated 
by the small number of illustrations. This can not be due to 
lack of funds, for " before and after " pictures of adenoid 
children, such as Cleveland gives, may save several pages of 
discussion, exhortation, and description, and many thousands 
of dollars for visits by nurses and truant officers and for 
teaching needlessly backward children. An obdurate trustee 
will not argue against a photograph of an unadjustable desk 
that causes spinal curvature because it does not fit its occu- 
pant, or of gas jets burning in the daytime. Either the forty 
cities printing illustrations are extravagant, or other super- 
intendents are profligate in failing to use the wealth of live 
material furnished by school incidents, children's activities, 
products of laboratory, workshop, and playground. If illus- 



1909] Sckojl reports as they are 115 

trations did not convince, enlighten, and entertain, makers of 
newspapers, magazines, and textbooks would save enough 
yearly to endow a national institute for the promotion of 
efficiency in public schools. 

Of 375 recommendations made in the reports of the first 
ten cities, the subject distribution was as follows : 

School property and equip- Vacation schools 8 

ment 84 Promotion and school mortal- 
Modifications of curriculum ... 43 ity 7 

Schools or classes for defec- School gardens 6 

tives 24 Text-book problems 5 

Professional progress of teach- Kindergartens 5 

ers 23 Methods of receiving and spend- 

Industrial education 19 ing funds 5 

Medical supervision, examina- School aid to needy children ... 2 

tion, etc 19 More accurate census I 

Teachers' salaries 18 Moral training i 

Truants or delinquents 14 Free lectures i 

School laws and board rules ... 14 Physical education I 

Closer correlation between parts Economy in supplies I 

of system 13 More visiting of schools by 

Classes for the " out of board i 

grade " 10 Size and make-up of board .... i 

Schools as social centers 9 Miscellaneous 40 

If the foregoing recommendations were to be adopted at one 
time, or if they were to be debated at one time, what commo- 
tion would result ! Some gravely indict present methods and 
equipment; all presume experience as their basis; all involve 
the expenditure of energy, and, with one or two exceptions, 
expenditure of money. It would cost approximately $25,000,- 
000 to carry out the recommendations made by Superintendent 
Maxwell of New York City, besides a radical change in the 
responsibilities of the health and educational departments. 
How worth while, therefore, a support from facts that will 
enlist lay understanding, sympathy, and cooperation; how 
dangerous, also, recommendations not justified by experience. 
If recommendations were based upon definite information 
and discust v^ith reference to such information, it would not 
be necessary to wait twenty-five or fifty years to grasp or 
reject the blessings tendered by these superintendents : school 
boards of five with an executive business agent and proper 



Ii6 Educational Review [February 

accounting methods; no more waste of supplies; annual school 
census; use of dwelling houses for overflow registration; pur- 
chase of sites, and construction of buildings according to a 
comprehensive plan, in anticipation of city growth; sanitary 
buildings only; heliostats and trained janitors; dressing-rooms, 
dispensaries, physical examination rooms and instruments, 
lunchrooms, kitchens, baths, exhibition rooms, photographic 
darkrooms, domestic science rooms, attendance offices for issu- 
ing work certificates, sanitary drinking fountains, telephones 
to save the attendance officers' time, ample schoolyards, athletic 
fields, playgrounds, and apparatus. All districts would have 
school gardens, vacation schools, night schools, and buildings 
opened for neighborhood clubs and entertainments. Every 
school would have its parents' association and cooperative rela- 
tions with labor unions, public libraries, relief agencies, cham- 
bers of commerce and manufactures. Teachers would re- 
ceive equal pay for equal work; would not draw pay when 
absent; would be compelled to take courses for their advance- 
ment; would be periodically tested, and, if found inefficient, 
would be either dropt or pensioned. All children would be 
protected from contagious and removable defects; nurses 
would explain defects to parents; laws would compel operation 
or better nourishment when necessary. Special schools or 
special classes would be started for the deaf, crippled, blind, 
paralytic ; while the backward would be studied and advanced. 
Foreigners would be taught civics; girls, domestic science; 
boys and girls would be given industrial and commercial train- 
ing; and the curriculum for elementary schools and high 
schools would be absolutely made over. Police courts would 
attend to truant cases with interest in the child's education. 
Greater attention would be given to school hygiene and moral 
instruction. Principals and teachers would be alert to recog- 
nize physical defects, and would hold frequent conferences so 
that upper and lower grades, elementary and higher schools, 
would work for a single plan ; the curriculum would fit for life 
as well as college; physiological, not chronological, age would 
determine the promotion to secondary schools. School mortal- 
ity and promotion would be studied, the elementary course 
shortened, and the shorter day recognized as the normal day 



1909] 



School reports as they are 



117 



for younger pupils. Promotion would be by subject and 
whenever the child is ready, and not when his fellows are 
ready, or when a majority of subjects are past. 

From the seventy-two reports analyzed 3,500 facts were 
scheduled, not including the financial items. Had each report 
contained all items, there would have been a total of 252,000 ; 
in fact, there were only 13,234. Not a single item appeared 
under the same name in all reports, nor did one appear in all 
of the reports for the first ten cities. The following table 
gives for these cities a consolidated statement showing for 
nine different subjects the total facts reported by all cities, 
the number by each city and its proportion of total possibilities 
— assuming similar treatment. 

LACK OF UNIFORMITY AND COMPLETENESS IN CITY 

REPORTS 

Consolidated Statement of Number of Facts Reported by Ten Cities 







_ 








m 






iti 






-d 


















■a 








TO 


m ^ 







OJ 


la 


215 




•a 




Ten Large 
Cities 


1^ 

TO dJ 


TO .)-> 



a 


u 



a 

OS 

i-. 


ft 
d 




> 

11 

0, 


go 
n 2 


3 


*a 

(X ft 

11 


m 


a 


'5 

Oi 

M 




< 

H 



Total sepa- 






















rate facts . 


• 1,664 


324 


505 


100 


124 


67 


46 


158 


60 


3,048 


New York . . 


. 383 


157 


260 


23 


II 


16 


18 


63 


24 


955 


Cleveland . . 


. 133 


2 


82 


31 


25 


8 


6 


61 


19 


367 


St. Louis . . . 


. 476 


21 


45 





26 


22 


2 


49 


15 


656 


Philadelphia 


9 


I 








I 








20 





31 


Buffalo 


• 374 


58 


82 








9 


2 


34 


20 


579 


Boston 


. 176 


32 


I 


39 


12 


2S 





26 


23 


334 


Baltimore. ... 


211 


18 


II 


2 


4 


9 


2 


44 


21 


322 


Pittsburgh. . 


. 69 


4 











8 


7 


13 


13 


114 


Chicago 


192 


32 


50 


I 


53 


6 


5 


28 


19 


386 


Cincinnati . . 


169 


55 


39 


33 


27 


16 


II 


32 


23 


405 


Totals Checke 


d 2,192 


380 


570 


129 


159 


119 


53 


370 


177 


4,149 


Total Poss 


2- 




















bilities . . 


. 16,640 


3,240 


5,050 


1,000 


1,240 


670 


460 


1,580 


600 


30,480 


Totals Checke 


:d 




















m i 1 1 i n 


g 




















Philadelph 


la 2,183 


379 


570 


129 


158 


119 


53 


350 


177 


4,118 


TotalPossib 


i- 




















lities Omz 


t- 




















ttn^ Philc 


i- 




















delphta. . . 


. 14.Q76 


2,907 


4.545 


900 


1,116 


603 


4T4 


1,422 


540 


27.423 



Ii8 Educational Review [February 

Reports as they are disappoint educators. In 1908, as in 
1868, when the National Education Association began to de- 
plore their poverty of helpfulness, school reports cover differ- 
ent periods, are not complete, use dissimilar language, and 
are not uniform, city with city, district with district, nor 
school with school within a city. Two attendance officers 
working side by side in Minneapolis or Utica answer 
different questions. Per capita in Chicago includes all 
costs. Many cities give no per capita. New York's 
per capita includes only part of the cost, and furnishes 
occasion every year for a squabble between the Normal Col- 
lege president, the City College president, and the city superin- 
tendent of schools about three per capitas made up of dif- 
ferent elements. Superintendent Snyder, of Jersey City, 
writes : " All who have anything to do with comparison and 
school statistics appreciate the danger of mistake in making 
these comparisons, because items that have the same names 
in different cities have so many different meanings." In spite 
of progress made in state reports, Superintendent Morrison 
of New Hampshire writes : " I am convinced that not a 
few otherwise scholarly studies have been made and results 
published which are almost wholly vitiated by lack of uni- 
formity. . . . Average attendance means one thing in 
Massachusetts and another thing in other parts of the 
country." Professor David S. Snedden declares in School 
reports and school efficiency, that " the majority of reports 
illustrate a striking phase of inefficiency in American munici- 
pal government," because they " fail conspicuously to provide 
statistical information either to the layman or to the ad- 
ministrator." Commissioner Brown of the United States 
Bureau of Education, said of that appeal for adequate reports : 
" I am very glad that this book has been written and pub- 
lished, and am convinced that we are to find ways by which 
the public school statistics in this country may be made more 
directly serviceable in the improvement of the schools." 

School reports as they are serve neither critics nor de- 
fenders of present tendencies in popular education. A well- 
known writer, who " went honestly to condemn " the public 



1909] School reports as they are 1 19 

schools, and " came back to explain and praise," says : " Nor 
is there a more misrepresented and misunderstood subject in 
America than this question of public schools." Yet he tries 
to shatter misrepresentation without reference to any school 
report, trusting to the small number of school facts which 
he is able to see with his own eyes. President Eliot con- 
demns large school boards, but does not seek proof in school 
reports. Superintendent Morris of Covington, Ky., laments 
" the dense ignorance of the average boy of the pres- 
ent day when he leaves school and applies for work;" neither 
he nor others furnish proof nor disproof. Theories come and 
go, experiments are made, curriculums are changed, but sel- 
dom is a school report quoted to justify an opinion or 
an innovation. 

Public officials do not use school reports. Mayors, gov- 
ernors, and presidents love to address meetings of educators; 
yet, judging from their executive treatment of school budgets, 
and their tardy recognition of school problems, they have 
drawn little knowledge or inspiration from school reports. 
Can you imagine a national conference at the White House to 
consider the conservation of our educational resources? 

Teachers do not look to school reports for help. Where, 
outside of Teachers College, Columbia University, is there, in 
the United States, a school for teachers that undertakes to 
train the educators of the future to prepare adequate and clear 
statements of school experience, or even to read school re- 
ports? In some instances, judging from workmanship and 
content, it is doubtful if the authors themselves have critically 
examined their products. 

Questions of local policy and taxation are seldom settled 
with reference to facts presented in school reports. New 
York's Charter Revision Commission has not thought it 
strange or inefficient to have recommended changes in the 
school charter without reading school reports. Not only is it 
not expected of New York school trustees that they themselves 
read the reports addrest to them, but a leading paper 
recently said that a new trustee was eminently fitted to tell 
what the schools need, " because he went thru the public 



I20 Educational Review [February 

school himself." How reports, when used, may influence local 
policy is illustrated in New York, whose fiscal officers have 
recently, without discredit to themselves, cut the educational 
budget from $33,000,000 to $27,500,000 because special re- 
ports to the budget committee showed : that year after year 
the Board of Education, in its estimates, had been overstating 
by hundreds of thousands of dollars the amount needed for 
additional teachers; that funds had been diverted contrary to 
written and verbal pledges; that money given for elementary 
schools had been used for other purposes; that of $18,000 
given for additional attendance officers, only $600 was used 
for that purpose; that $7,000 given to increase particular 
clerical salaries had been distributed among a larger number 
late in the year so as to effect an annual salary increase of 
$20,000; that money was asked for rent of a building in 1909 
which had not been used since 1907; that money given for 
school kitchens, etc., had been used for other purposes; that 
it Was costing from three to five times as much per pupil or 
per room for repairs of furniture and pianos, as well as of 
buildings, in the Bronx and Queens as in Brooklyn and Man- 
hattan. When given a chance at the taxpayers' hearing to 
defend their estimates, school officers were without data to 
justify a protest. The only demurrer entered was by a 
volunteer body, ineffective because both uninformed and 
misinformed. 

Medical supervision, examination, inspection are discust by 
forty reports. By 1907 the physical welfare of school chil- 
dren was of national interest. Grave questions of state poHcy 
are here involved: State socialism, public health, school cur- 
riculum, physical education, school hygiene, school morals, 
school budget. Yet little can be learned from the regular re- 
ports of ten cities with an enrollment of 1,500,000, and a 
probable 900,000 needing attention to eyes, teeth, breathing, 
nourishment, etc. In 1905 Superintendent Maxwell had pro- 
posed at St. Louis the giving of free meals, and had pro- 
tested against forcing free instruction upon children whose 
undernourished bodies made them unable to profit from such 
instruction. Robert Hunter's Poverty, John Spargo's Bitter 



1909] School reports as they are 121 

cry of the children, Chicago's Bureau of Child Study, and 
the Massachusetts state medical inspection law had stimulated 
press comment. The New York Committee on Physical Wel- 
fare of School Children had completed its first year of re- 
search and educational work. Altho New York had 
furnished inspiration to other cities thru magazines and 
press articles, the school report shows not a statement of fact, 
not a table of work done. Boston reports 39 of 100 facts 
given in ten reports, but omits the number of schools where 
examinations were made, the number of children examined, 
excluded, needing treatment, treated, cured. Chicago and 
Baltimore mention medical inspection, but do not report 
their experience. The New York report charges the health 
department with inefficiency in the examination of school 
children for physical defects, and declares that medical super- 
vision will never work successfully until taken from the 
department of health and lodged in the department of edu- 
cation. Legislation is recommended to punish parents who 
fail to attend to defective children. Altho the department of 
health had a complete record of children examined and 
found defective, the school superintendent gives no facts; 
altho tests had proved that parents would act if shown 
why children's school work was hindered by physical defects, 
these tests were not quoted. Obviously, it makes all the dif- 
ference in the world to the success of medical supervision 
whether the state must send a nurse or a police summons to 
homes. The Bureau of Municipal Research found that par- 
ents of 96 per cent, of 1,400 children in three different districts 
of New York City promised to act promptly when told the 
reason for acting, while 81 per cent, did act at once; and 
the health department, alleged to be incorrigible, when con- 
fronted with evidence of its inefficiency, established a bureau 
of child hygiene with a program bound to succeed if school 
officials cooperate and publish results. 

Failure to win promotion and school mortality are worry- 
ing educators. To remedy these evils, the National Educa- 
tion Association advocates a simplified curriculum. Com- 
missioner Draper, of New York State, declares that school 



122 Educational Review [Feoruary 

records prove the necessity for industrial and vocational 
training; others advocate promotion by subject and flexible 
grading. The children have been in school; they have been 
counted; yet school reports throw very little light upon the 
subject. The ten largest cities give 324 different facts; only 
one attempts to give reasons for dropping out. A few re- 
ports try to explain why children drop out of one or more 
grades of high school; but why children drop out of elemen- 
tary grades, why they never go into the fifth, sixth, or seventh 
grade, or into high school, we can not learn. While many 
superintendents are ready to condemn the present curriculum 
and to adopt changes, their reports give no fact basis to justify 
remedies because present deficiencies are neither diagnosed 
nor proved. The superintendent of Birmingham records 
with surprize that the introduction of manual training does 
not seem to have stopt school mortality. The records of 
New York, not applied to this particular problem, show that 
high schools where commercial and industrial training are 
given, do not keep their pupils better than other schools hav- 
ing classical training. When the Detroit superintendent talks 
of first-year pupils dropping out, he says : " Twenty-five be- 
cause of illness; four because of illness in the family; two 
because of failing sight; forty-one because of work; six 
transferred; ten left the city; nine were indifferent to school; 
one took up music; for twenty-three, causes unknown." 
Yonkers has a table that shows the number who entered, the 
number left, the number completing eight terms of work or 
more, and the number completing from none to seven terms' 
work. The latest statement of the New York superintendent 
on this subject is in the report for 1906, and contains no facts 
but depends upon iindoiibtedly, prohahly, generally, approx- 
imately, in my judgment, a feiv. 

Speaking of school mortality, several cities present facts 
relative to the mortality of school children. Allegheny gives 
by districts the number of pupils who died during the year; 
Cincinnati, the name, age, and cause of death; Columbus, the 
number of causes and deaths by months; Trenton, the number 
of deaths, causes, and ages by schools. There is reason to 



1909] School reports as they are 123 

question the accuracy and completeness of these reports. No 
one knows how much of the gap between average membership 
and total net membership is due to sickness or to death. 
Ought the relation between school and pupil be such that a 
child can die and be marked as an absentee or be sick and 
marked as a truant, or that preventable diseases can tax 
school funds by hundreds of thousands of dollars annually 
without the schools themselves notifying their communities 
of such cost? 

Truancy and absence furnish illustration of all the strong 
and weak points of school reporting. New York leads with 260 
facts, more than three times the number given by any other 
school, altho the first ten cities give 505 facts. Even these 
fail to answer many important questions. A few of thirty 
new facts reported for New York by Associate Superintend- 
ent E. B. Shallow throw light upon the possibility of strength- 
ening reports : Number of cases of truancy reinvestigated, 
5,867; number returned to school, 12,755; number due to 
neglect of parents, 2,771 ; number of cases of non-attendance 
due to indifference of parents, to poverty, to sickness, to tem- 
porary necessity; number of children placed on probation by 
district superintendents after hearing of charges of truancy 
or incorrigibility; number of both classes who improve under 
probation; number of parents fined, 161; parents imprisoned, 
33; number placed on probation by children's court; sus- 
pended incorrigibles. Springfield gives by schools the indi- 
vidual truants, the number of truants, the days of truancy, the 
prosecutions of habitual truants, the number committed to tru- 
ancy schools and cases pending. Springfield and New Haven 
give half-days of truancy. Providence gives ages of truants 
and results of prosecutions. One can not learn for the differ- 
ent cities when the truant officer is notified that the child 
needs attention, or in how many cases the name is dropped 
from the list because '' an undesirable citizen." Kansas City 
distinguishes temporary absentees and cases having from one 
to nine investigations, giving, also, by schools, the number 
of cases and investigations. The New York report states 
that part-time pupils are inclined to play truant, a fact fre- 



124 Educational Review [February 

quently urged against the Denver system of the shorter day; 
yet m 1906- 1907 part-time pupils, constituting more than 14 
per cent, of tlie average enroUment for elementary schools, 
furnish but 12.7 per cent, of the truants. 

Why is it that school reports are still so unsatisfactory? 
Because we have not expected enough from them; secondly, 
because it has been made no one's business to keep alive be- 
tween conventions and between articles the interest there ex- 
prest, — to applaud the efficient and segregate the backward. 
When committees were appointed, they worked at odd times 
without funds for collecting evidence or circulating conclu- 
sions. National commissioners and state commissioners have 
been content to publish reports that they knew were lacking in 
uniformity, completeness, and accuracy. More important, 
however, are reasons inherent in the mental attitude of edu- 
cators which account for the delay in securing action where 
there has been nominal agreement : ( i ) They have urged 
each other to prepare statements for the sake of fellow edu- 
cators; (2) they have talked too much of uniformity and too 
little of accuracy, completeness, and significance — uniformity 
of defects can never help; (3) they have not seen that they 
can not get proper reports unless they employ records to tell 
currently their story; (4) they have not wanted to test their 
own efficiency or the soundness of their methods. 

Chief of these reasons for inadequate reporting is the last. 
What one can learn from one's colleagues is relatively little 
compared with what one can learn from oneself by applying 
efficiency tests and asking one's community to apply such 
tests. The gap between what one tries and what one does 
is more important than the gap between one's own attempt 
and another's attempt. Success in modern business depends 
upon self-analysis, as well as upon study of others. The first 
reason for school reports is to learn whether the reporter 
himself is measuring up to the requirements and opportunities 
of his office. The measurer should be the public, for whose 
intelligence regarding school policy and school facts too little 
concern has been shown. What hope is there for democracy 
if its emblem, the public school, is not managed on democratic 



1909] School reports as they are 125 

lines? If the public is to administer its own schools, it must 
be given current knowledge of results, including failures. 
Citizen judgment can never be based upon intelligence so long 
as every question is treated with contempt and regarded as 
reactionary criticism of free education, or so long as tax- 
payers are expected to " stand and deliver," and blindly to 
accept as sound any and every plan for spending school money 
and school energy. 

If citizen interest and intelligence are necessary; if the 
sacredness of the teaching profession is due to its product, not 
its field; if there is a limit to money required by schools; 
if the public may be led to cooperate by information, as well 
as by cajolery or intrigue; if the title "trustee" does not at 
once enable citizen directors to sense school needs and school 
results that as taxpayers they are unable to see; if admission 
of error will promote education, the potential value of school 
reports is inestimable. If, fifty years ago, it had been sug- 
gested that, in absence of proof to the contrary, teachers and 
superintendents might be sailing under false colors, besides 
adding to local taxes and their own labors, it is hardly likely 
that progress in school administration would have been so 
tardy. If, for ten years, taxpayers had been told by educators 
that they should look for proof, they would have forced, long 
ago, the reforms that educators are unanimous in desiring. 

William H. Allen 

Secretary of the Bureau of Municipal Research 
New York 



QUESTIONS ANSWERED 



BY 



SCHOOL REPORTS AS THEY ARE 



SUBMITTED TO THE 

CONFERENCE OF STATE SUPERINTENDENTS 

CHICAGO, FEB. 22, 1909 



"What are the next steps to be taken in the direction 
of desirable uniformity in the reports of city school 
statistics called for by state and national offices of 
education?" 



BASED UPON ANAIvYSIS OF 72 CITY REPORTS 
BY THE 

BUREAU OF MUNICIPAIv RKSEARCH 
261 Broadway, Nkw York City 



IMPORTANT TERMS 
WHOSE USE AND MEANING ARE NOT UNIFORM 

School age: Pending uniform state requirements, is it practicable for 
all reports to distinguish the following age groups — 4, 5-6, 7-13, 14, 
15, 16-17, 18-21? Is it desirable to give census for each age? 

Population of city: Since only a few cities have actual counts oftener 
than once in ten years, should reports indicate whether total popu- 
lation and school population are counts or estimates? 

Net: If supposed to include no pupil more than once, is it practicable 
and desirable for reports to indicate whether and what steps are 
taken to secure accurate net figures? 

Attendance: Should those who attend not more than one — or five, or 
ten — sessions figure in attendance and in net enrollment? Should 
legal or special holidays be counted as school days? Are any 
counted as present on holidays, who were not present the day— 
or the week — before? 

Enrollment, Registration, Membership: Should register mean to re- 
cord a child's intention to attend? Should one who registers but 
fails to attend be enrolled or counted as a member? Is there a 
minimum of attendances that should be required before one may 
be said to be a member or to belong? Is it practicable to dis- 
tinguish between those admitted or entered and those belonging? 
Should reports indicate when pupils once enrolled are dropped 
from the list of members on which attendance is computed? Are 
those present but one half-day counted the same as those present 
two half -days? Is average attendance based on average — or total — 
number enrolled — or registered? Is it worth while for a few years 
to report proportion of actual attendances to both total and net 
registration and to total, net and average enrollment? 

Truants, Absentees, Non-attendants: Should these terms be defined in 
all reports? Should those who are dropped from the roll because 
of irregular attendance or chronic absence be reported as truant 
and absent and thus affect average attendance? Should a distinc- 
tion be made between those dying and others withdrawn from 
school? 

Cases of vs Individuals: Are truants, absentees, the tardy, counted 
more than once? 

Arrested, Apprehended, Brought before Court: Is it desirable to re- 
port the different steps of truancy and non-attendance work? 

Normal age. Backward: Should reports indicate by years those in 
each grade and explain what years "normal" covers for each grade? 

58 



Medical Inspection, Examination, Follow up work. Treatment: Unless 
these terms are defined communities having but a perfunctory 
"looking over" for obvious contagion may be led to believe that 
their childrens' physical defects are discovered and treated and 
their school environment supervised by physicians. 

Manual, Industrial, Vocational, Trade, Domestic, Commercial: Grow- 
ing popular and professional interest will increase the evil results 
of misusing these terms 

Cost: Does it, wherever mentioned, include all labor, and all material 
used for the purpose and period described, whether bills therefor 
were paid last year, are already paid this year, or still owing? Or 
does it include only cash payments charged during the period re- 
ported to the purpose described? Where one branch or division or 
purpose is charged with expenses incurred for another, should 
this fact be clearly stated? Where outlays for permanent improve- 
ments are included in current expenses, should the fact be stated? 

Percapita: Is it based upon totals or net figures — for enrollment or 
registration or attendance? 



59 



KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS 



a 


= 


by 


age 


bp 


= 


" 


birth place 


cl 


= 


(( 


class 


CO 


= 


(( 


color 


da 


= 


It 


days 


de 


= 


ti 


department 


dt 


= 


(( 


district 


gj. 


= 


(( 


grade 


lis 


= 


(C 


high school 


kd 


= 


" 


kind of school 


mo 


= 


(( 


month 


na 


= 


" 


nationality 


qr 


= 


11 


quarter 


rm 


= 


(1 


room 


so 


= 


C( 


school 


sx 


= 


(1 


sex 


tr 


= 


( t 


term 


wk 


= 


II 


week 


yr 


= 


<l 


year 


+ 


= 


(( 


increase or decrease 


% 


= 


II 


percentage 


( ) 


= 


l( 


subdivision of preceding item 



also 



(geographical division) 



ILLUSTRATION 

Registration— sx (sc (a, gr), gr (a) ) means that the following facts 
are given : (i) the total registration for all schools; (2) the total of 
each sex registered ; (3) the sex registration in each school; (4) the 
ages of each sex in each school; (5) the number of each sex in each 
grade of each school ; (6) the sex registration in each grade; (7) the 
sex registration of each age in each grade 



QUESTION 



For which main divisions of significant school facts is it desirable or 
practicable to report any — or all — of the above subdivisions ? 

60 



Questions Answered by One or More of 72 Reports Regarding 
PROMOTION AND SCHOOL MORTALITY 

All Schools 

Promoted — sx, %; ahead of normal grade; withdrawn, sx 

Progress and survival— % (charts for 1896-1906, 1897-1907); complet- 
ing elementary school course or its equivalent; beginning grammar 
school course who later entered hs; beginning grammar school 
course who completed a three years course in hs; beginning 
grammar school course who completed a four years course in hs; 
elementary school graduates or equivalent who entered hs; be- 
ginning a hs course who completed a three years hs course; be- 
ginning a hs course who completed a four years hs course 

All Elementary Schools 

Promoted or advanced — dt, tr (dt), gr (dt, tr (dt) ), sc (gr) ; per cent, 
dt, tr, gr (dt, tr (dt) ) ; midyear promotions, dt, tr (dt) ; time oc- 
cupied in accomplishing grade work; by periods of time; by groups 
(by periods of time) 

Not promoted or advanced — sc, gr (sx) 

Normal age — gr; above normal age, gr; % above normal age, yr, gr 
(yr); behind grade; % 

Pupils withdrawn — sx, to other public schools of city; of state; to pri- 
vate schools; to other schools, tr, % (tr); leaving to go to work; 
because of illness, tr, % (tr); for other reasons; pupils registered 
last year who are not on register this year; removed from city; 
removed to other districts of city; gone to other than public 
schools; sick or visiting; gone to work; unaccounted for above 

Suspensions or expulsions — sc, tr, yr, % (sx, tr, yr) 

Graduates — yr (dt), sc (sx), sx (dt, yr (dt) ), a (dt) ; normal age; 
above normal age; average age, dt, sx (dt); admitted to high 
school, sc 

Kindergartens 

Promoted to elementary school — sx, sc (sx); % based on average 
daily membership, yr 

Withdrawn — sx, sc (sx), tr, % (tr) 

Primary and Grammar Departments 

Promoted — sx, gr (sx) ; % of promotion on average daily attendance; 
ahead of normal grade; behind normal grade 

6i 



Foreign Classes 

Promoted to grades — gr 

Special Classes 

Promoted — rm, %; disposition of those promoted; witMrawn, sx 

Evening Schools 
Certification — sx, sc (sx, yr, subject (yr) ); withdrawn, so (sx) 

High School 

Entitled to enter from public school — sx, sc (sx), yr, + 

Admitted from all schools — tr, hs (tr), sx (sc); average age, sc; 
from public schools; from other schools or other sources, tr, hs 
(tr), sx (tr, sc (tr) ); elementary graduates entering, dt, %; from 
public schools; from other schools; ahead of normal grade; be- 
hind 

Discharged — before graduation, yr, sc (yr, sx), gr (yr, sc (yr) ), % 
(yr, sc (yr) ); withdrawn, sx; during year and not re-entering 

Promoted or advanced — sx, sc, gr (sc, sx), % (sc (dt) ); % based on 
average daily membership, yr; not promoted or advanced, gr, sc 
(gr); certified, sx (dt, sc (dt) ), -f (yr) ; average age, dt, sx 
(dt) 

Graduated — yr, + (yr, sx), de (yr), sx (dt, yr), sc (sx (dt) ), tr (sc, 
sx (sc) ) ; courses, sc, tr, sx (sc, tr) ; ratio, sx, yr; % (sc) ; 
average age, dt, sx (dt) 

Entering higher institutions — yr, kind of institution (yr) ; from last 
graduating class, sx, sc (sx), kind of institution (sx, sc (sx) ) 

Colored High Schools 

Admitted from grammar schools — tr (yr) ; from other schools, tr (yr); 
by promotion during year, tr (sx) ; discharged, yr (%) ; graduated, 
sx, de 

Normal Schools 

Applicants from city high schools — sc, tr; from outside schools, dt, tr 

(dt); admitted from city high schools, sx, sc (tr), % (sc) ; from 

outside schools, dt, tr (dt), % (dt) ; average age, so; promoted; 

% based on average daily membership, yr, sc; withdrawn; gradu- 

, ated, sc, tr (sc (yr) ); since organization, sc 

62 



Questions Answered by One or More of 72 Reports Regarding 

MEDICAL SUPERVISION 

Purposes — inspection to discover communicable diseases; exclusion of 
notifiable diseases; treatment of minor diseases; examination of 
children at request of teachers; examination of all children for 
physical or mental defects; supervision of play, physical training, 
buildings 

Authorities responsible — board of health; board of education; volun- 
teer agency co-operating with schools 

Staff — inspectors, term of service; physicians, co, paid, unpaid; time 
given to work; nurses, paid, unpaid; under health board; under 
school board; under both 

Schools — 'inspected; not inspected 

Children examined — dt, sc, kd, gr, cl, mo; after four days consecutive 
absence; defects found; cases of disease found; by school nurses; 
for special or ungraded classes or schools, sx (dt), sc (dt, sx), 
dt; sent to classes, dt, sc (dt); reported dt, sc (dt) ; not reported; 
backward examined by teachers 

Treatment — excluded, yr, mo, sc; for each disease; needing treatment, 
yr; receiving treatment, mo, sc (mo) ; for each disease, %, yr, and 
defect, %, yr; not receiving treatment; cured; for each disease; 
treated at home, mo, for each disease; treated by nurse, for each 
defect, for each disease, mo; treated by family physician; by ocu- 
list; treated at hospital or dispensary; cured and returned; still 
under treatment 

Notifications — to schools; to parents by mail; by messenger 
Aid — sc; by volunteer agencies; eye glasses; other relief 
Visits — to schools, mo, sc; to homes, mo; by nurses 
Scholarship — no. backward 

Questions Answered by One or More of 72 Reports Regarding 

PHYSICAL DEFECTIVES 

Crippled — enrolled, sx, mo; average, mo; average membership, yr; 
average attendance, yr, % (yr); epileptics; blind; enrolled, sx; aver- 
age membership, sx; average attendance, sx; withdrawn, sx; 
remaining, sx; average absence, sx; deaf; enrolled, yr; net, yr; 
average, yr, na, bp; registration, gr (sx, average age), a, sx; aver- 
age, sx, yr; entered, sx; number at date; average attendance, 
yr, sx; % yr; not absent, %; for certain period, %; av. absence, 
sx; not tardy, sx; persistent attendance, %; received from other 
buildings; remaining; average per teacher 

63 



Questions Answered by One or More of 72 Reports Regarding 
MENTAL DEFECTIVES 

Registration — dt, yr, tr (dt), cl (dt) ; average, rm; by groups; needing 
enrollment, co, sx; enrolled, yr, dt, rm, sx, cl, sc (sx, rm); re- 
ceived from other schools, sx; average daily attendance, %; dis- 
position; returned to regular schools, rm; found in regular schools 
unable to complete grade; sent to institutions; discharged from 
school; going to work; withdrawn because unprogressive; leaving; 
remaining; progress, no. at different rates; residence, income 
classes; physical size, degree of backwardness 

Questions Answered By One Or More of 72 Reports Regarding 
TRUANCY AND COMPULSORY EDUCATION 

Definition of absence, of truanCy 

Truant officers by each appointing body 

Cases reported — (all, sx, truancy, absence, non-attendance, mo,) ; in- 
correctly; verified; by principals, dt; census, dt; citizens, dt; po- 
lice, dt; from other public schools; Incorrigible 

Cases investigated — a, dt, mo; reinvestigated, dt; absence, dt; from 
public,dt; parochial, dt; other schools, dt; on officer's initiative, 
dt; reinvestigated, dt; supposed truancy, dt; non-attendance, dt; 
complaints, dt; reinvestigated; cases excused, % (sc); + (%) 

Family relations (truants, non-attendants, both) — ; father living 
mother living; step father; step mother; father intemperate; 
orphans 

Disorderly children — ^violating rules, mo; warned for incorrigibility, 
mo; damaging school property, dt; mutilating or losing school 
books, dt; juvenile offenders investigated 

Truancy — individuals reported, sx; persons warned, mo; cases, dt, sc, 
tr, yr, mo, -f; individuals, sx, dt; days, dt, sc; half-days, dt, sc, tr, 
yr; pupils behind grade, due to, gr, co; pupils returned, dt, sx, mo; 
to private, parochial and public schools, no. times, dt; by attend- 
ance officers; from grades without manual training; not located; 
left city; unenrolled found; % truancy on attendance 

Absences — children reported, sc, mo; absentees, mo; without permis- 
sion, sc, mo; cases acted upon; cases of irregular attendance looked 
after by attendance officer; non-enrolled; non-attendants placed in 
school, %, dt, sx, mo; children found on streets; returned to school, 
sc, mo; children 14 at work; different children registered in office 
of district superintendent, yr; full time classes, yr; part time 

64 



classes, yr; special classes, yr; ungraded classes, yr; working 
legally, sx, dt; neither at work nor in school, a, dt, yr, +; working 
in stores or shops, yr, dt, +; cannot locate, dt, sx; left city 

Illegally employed — ^found by police, sx; investigated by attendance 
officers; legally employed, sx; placed in school, yr, sx, dt; regu- 
larly attending school, sx; over age, sx; under age, sx; will 
obtain employment certificates; physically unable to attend, sx; 
not found or moved, sx; incorrectly reported, sx; cases not yet 
closed, sx; over 14 working for parents, sx 

Kept at home illegally — reported by police, sx; investigated by at- 
tendance officers; placed in school, sx; legally employed at home, 
sx; elsewhere, sx; physically unable to attend, sx; temporarily 
ill, sx; regularly attending school, sx; not found or moved, sx; 
under age, sx; cases not. yet closed, sx; committed to institu- 
tions, sx; placed in private school, sx; mentally defective, sx; 
will obtain employment certificate, sx; on road with theatrical 
company, sx; other causes, sx; minding house, dt, yr, + 

Causes of truancy and non-attendance (each class and total), cases 
due to — indifference of parents, sx; sickness, sx, dt; poverty, 
sx, dt; temporary necessity, sx, dt; lack of clothing; contagious 
disease; parental neglect, sx, dt, yr; mother obliged to work; 
mentally or physically disqualified, sx, dt; out late at night; ques- 
tionable home; total over 16 years 

Visits by attendance officers — ^to homes of non-attendants, yr; to 
homes of truants, yr; homes visited twice, mo; homes visited three 
times, mo; to schools, dt, yr, mo; to stores and factories, yr; to 
courts, yr; miscellaneous, yr 

Notices, warnings, etc., sent, mo — to parents for truancy; for non- 
attendance; served on children; on employers; compulsory no- 
tices; interview with parents at office; pupils involved; parents 
or guardians warned, notified or written to, sx, mo 

Treatment of truancy cases by superintendent — summoned for hear- 
ing, yr; attending; failing to attend; heard on charges, yr; placed 
on probation; transferred to other schools, yr; improving under 
probation and transfer; disregarding probation and recommended 
for commitment, yr; committed to truant schools; parents refus- 
ing to sign commitment papers, yr 

Treatment of incorrigibles by superintendent — on charges, yr; placed 
on probation; transferred to other schools, yr; improving under 
probation and transfer; disregarding probation and recommended 
for suspension and commitment, yr; parents refusing to sign com- 
mitment papers, yr 

Action by courts, juvenile-police-magistrate — children taken to, 
dt, sx, yr; on charge of truancy, sx; of incorrigibility, sx; of 

65 



delinquency; of neglect; cases committed, yr; persons in parental 
relation arrested, yr; fined, yr, mo; imprisoned, yr; prosecuted, 
mo; other persons, yr, firms, yr, or corporations, yr, violating com- 
pulsory education law; persons prosecuted for selling cigarettes 
to school children, dt; for allowing school children in pool rooms, 
dt; persons arrested on warrants, sx; cases disposed of; prosecu- 
tions, sx, dt; of persons over 16; of boys; convictions, sx, dt; 
cases pending, sx; cases dismissed of truancy; of non-attendance; 
commitments; truants committed, yr (when first arraigned, sx); 
with parents' consent, dt, sx; after probation, sx; to other insti- 
tutions, sx; truants transferred to other school; non-attendants 
committed to truant schools, dt, sx; with parents' consent, dt, sx; 
transferred to another school; to other institutions; suspended 
incorrigibles placed on probation, mo; committed to truant school, 
yr, sx, mo; twice; three times; to other institutions, yr, sx, mo; 
to private homes; to parents or relatives; total children placed on 
probation, yr, sx; total transferred; total children arrested and 
parents notified, dt, mo, sx; more than once; special cases; parent 
cases 

Treatment of truancy cases by truant schools, parental, or special 
schools for truants — enrollment, sx; registration, tr, yr, +, gr (sx 

(a) ), na, bp; church affiliation; use of tobacco; average, yr, gr; 
including temporary withdrawals; since admitted; admitted by 
transfer, gr; attendance, average, tr, yr, gr, +, %, largest number 
at any one time; no. of sessions; average age; committed; placed 
on probation, yr, mo (sx) ; satisfactory, sx; parolled, yr; respected 
parole, yr; violated parole and returned, yr; days detained; maxi- 
mum; minimum; discharged, with work certificate; without work 
certificate; to public school; left city; as vagrant; committed to 
other institutions; by court, through police; through parent; 
through school; to other truant school; to hospital or other in- 
stitution for treatment; death; ready to return to regular school; 
to go to work with certificate; without certificate; cured of 
truancy; of incorrigibility; improving steadily; spasmodically; not 
improving 



Questions Answered by One or More of 72 Reports Regarding 
WORKING PAPERS, WORK CERTIFICATES, ETC 

Certificates issued — age and school, yr (na), gr; work, mo, sx, gr (sx); 
from public school, gr (sx, mo); other schools, gr (sx, mo); 
schools outside city, gr (sx, mo) ; public school below 6th grade, 
gr (sx, mo); approved, mo; refused, mo, sx; revoked 

Exemptions — a, yr, gr; on grounds of poverty, mo; graduates; full or- 
phans; father dead; mother dead; parents separated; divorced; 

66 



average term (weeks) of exemption; weeks for which, exemptions 
were granted; affidavits to establish age of children 

Aid — applications for scholarship aid; recommended as worthy; rec- 
ommended to remain at work; required to remain at school; not 
located; aided; from public school; from private or parochial 
school; applications for free text books investigated 

Wewsboys — registered 

Questions Answered by. One or More or 72 Reports Regarding 
POPULATION AND ATTENDANCE 

All Schools 

'Population — yr, dt; school census; % in public schools, dt; % school 
age to population 

-School age — sx, co (sx) ; in census, co (dt), sx, dt (sx); compulsory; 
in census, a; in school, a; not in public school; in other schools; 
physically unable to attend, %; between 10 and 18 who cannot 
read or write English, sx; who cannot read or write any language, 
sx," between 4 and 18, a, sc, sx (sc) ; between 9 and 15, yr; aver- 
age age of those not in school, sx (dt) 

Sittings — dt, yr; deficiency or excess, dt 

Enrollment — mo (yr), yr, dt (mo (yr) ), sx, a (%, -+-, sx, yr), + (yr, % 
(yr), between 9 and 15 (%) ), na; excluding transfers; re-enroll- 
ment, yr; net, yr (dt^ + (dt, yr, % (dt, yr) ) ) ; average, yr, dt 
(yr) ; %; a (yr, between 9 and 15 (yr) ); new pupils, tr; from 
other districts; outside city; other than public schools; same 
school district; entered, sx, a (sx); remaining, sx 

Registration — na, bp, co, sx (yr, dt (yr), gr (sc) ), yr (gr), a, + C^")} 
gr (tr), sc (sx), gr (yr) ; including temporary withdrawals, yr, +; 
at end of year, a, yr; %, sx, tr, on enumeration, yr; net, tr; aver- 
age, yr (+ (dt, % (dt) ), dt, sx (%, dt), -f (%) ; for given no. of 
yrs; % on enrollment, yr; average monthly, sc; admitted by trans- 
fer, sx; from city schools; state; private; other states or coun- 
tries; transfered, sx; nationalities with greatest representation; 
part-time, % (dt) ; average per teacher 

Attendance — sx (dt), age-groups (sx), a (gr, sx (dt), %), average age 
(sx, gr), gr; other than public schools, sx, age-groups (sx) ; church 
schools, sx (dt) ; private, sx (dt) ; not in school, sx (dt) ; % on 
registration, sx, yr, tr; % on average registration, yr; % on aver- 
age monthly presence; average, yr (dt (sx), mo; mo, -f (yr, dt 
(sx), % (yr, dt (sx) ) ) ; average rate for no. of yrs; % on actual no. 

67 



days school was in session, tr (gr), dt, sx; occupation; regu- 
larity of, yr (dt), %; varying degrees of, %; average monthly, 
sc, sx, mo; persistent, by 20 da. groups, by ^ da. per week; days 
present, sc; average per teacher; % on no. of days sc. was in ses- 
sion, yr 

Part-time attendance — sc, yr (dt), + (dt, % (dt) ) 

Absence — (average, sx; not absent, yr, sx; % da, sx, %; varying de- 
grees of, %; legally under 8; legally under 14; deaf, sx; crippled, 
sx; dumb, sx; blind, sx; mentally defective, sx; teachers, sc, Yz 
da, yr 

Tardiness — pupils, yr, +; not tardy, % da (sx), yr; teachers, sc, time 
lost 

Kindergartens 

Enrollment — mo (yr), sc, sx (sc), yr; average monthly, yr, % (yr) ; 
registration, yr (sx), sx, tr (gr, sx (gr), sc), sc, dt (sx), a (yr, 
dt, sx (gr, yr) ), qr (sc, yr); at close of yr (sc, yr) ; %, tr (gr, sx 
(gr) ); average, dt, % (dt), yr, + (%), sx (%), sc, groups; average 
monthly, sx, dt (sx) ; average per teacher, yr, +, %, gr, dt 

Attendance — average, sx, dt (sx), tr (gr, sc), yr, mo (yr), dt (sx), sc; 
% (tr (gr), dt, sc); average per teacher, gr 

Absence — average, dt ' 

Colored Kindergarten 

Enrollment — sc, sx (sc), yr; membership, qr (sc, yr) ; close of yr, sc, 
yr; average, yr, sc; attendance, average, yr, sc, % (sc) 

All Elementary Schools 

Enrollment — sx, sc (groups, sx, gr), gr, groups, yr, +, subject (sc), de 
(gr, sc), na, bp (sc); excluding transfers, sc; counted only once, 
sc; entered, sx (a, sc) ; above normal age, gr, % (gr, yr); transfers, 
sc, sx (sc) 

Registration — sc (dt), sx (sc (a, gr), gr), dt, gr (sx, dt), cl (sx (a) ), 
yr, +, tr (sc (gr), gr), a (sx, gr (dt, sx), sc) ; including temporary 
withdrawals, groups (sc), sc (yr); groups (sc, sx, gr (sx (a) ) ); 
at end of yr (sc, sx (sc, gr (sc) ) ); net, tr (sc); average, dt, yr, 
+ (yr, dt, %), sx (%, sc), sc (groups), groups, % (dt) 

Attendance — average, sc, dt (sc), tr (sc (gr), gr), sx (sc), yr, +, gr 
(sc), groups (sc), % (sc, groups (sc) ); persistency, Vz da. absences, 
sc, % (sc) 

Absence — average, sc; various degrees (sc, % (sc) ); average per 
teacher, yr (+, %), sc (a, sx); remaining, sc, sx (sc), gr (sc) 

68 



Tardiness^— yr; not tardy, sc; not absent, sc 

Colored Elementary Schools 

Enrollment — sx, yr, +. na, sc; including transfers, sc; entered, sx 
(sc); transfered, sc, sx (sc) ; registration, sc, sx (sc (a, gr) ); in- 
cluding temporary withdrawals, sc; at end of yr, sc, sx (sc, gr 
(sc) ); average (sc); attendance, average, sc, % (sc) ; average per 
teacher, sc; persistency by % da. absences, sc; not absent, sc; 
tardiness, yr; not tardy, sc 

Primary Department 

Enrollment — sx, % (yr) ; average monthly, yr, dt (yr) ; registration, tr, 
sx (gr), sc (gr), gr (cl (yr) ), yr, + (yr (gr) ), % (tr (sx (gr) ) ); 
average, gr (yr) ; average a (sc (gr) ); a (sx (gr) ); average per 
teacher, gr; attendance, average, tr (gr), yr, dt (yr), gr, % (tr 
(gr) ) ; average per teacher, gr 

Grammar Department 

Enrollment — sx, % (yr) ; average monthly, yr, dt (yr) ; registration, 
tr, sx (gr), sc (gr), qr (cl (yr) ), yr, + (yr (qr) ), % (tr (sx 
(gr) ) ) ; average, gr (yr) ; average age, sc (gr) ; average per 
teacher, gr; new pupils, tr, % (tr) ; transferred, tr; to public, tr, 
% (tr) ; net registration, tr, % (tr) ; never before attended, tr, % 
(tr); registered this term and last also, tr, % (tr) 

Attendance — average, tr (gr), yr, dt (yr), gr, % (tr (gr) ); average per 
teacher, gr, a, sx (gr); transfers, from public schools, tr, % (tr) 

All High, Normal and Latin Schools 

Enrollment — yr (dt, sc, a (sx) ), sx (yr (gr), cl), sc (sx (gr, cl,), gr 
(sx, sc, yr), a (sx, sc (sx) ), tr, na (sc), de (gr, sc), + (cl (sx 
(yr) ) ), % (yr), % of boys (yr), % of + (dt) ; % on average mem- 
bership, yr; subject, cl, sc (cl); net, sc, yr; average, yr 

Registration — yr (sx, +, dt), tr (gr, sx (gr) ), + (sx, yr), sc (sx, dt), 
a (sx, gr (sx), yr), qr (yr, cl (yr) ), sx, na, bp; % on number ad- 
mitted, yr; % of boys; including temporary withdrawals, sx, yr, sc 
(yr) ; excluding transfers, sc, sx (sc) ; net, tr, sx, sc (sx) ; %, tr (gr, 
sx (gr) ); average, dt, yr (+ (%) ), sx (%), sc (yr, +, sx, gr), gr 
(yr), mo, % (dt) ; average per teacher, gr, yr, sc, tr 

Attendance — average, sc (sx), sx, tr (gr), yr ( + ). gi* (sc), mo; oc- 
cupation; % boys; % (sc, tr (gr), gr (sc), mo, yr) ; attending during 
year; persistency, by % da. absences (sc, % (sc), yr) ; remaining 
at end of year, sx (yr, gr), sc (sx), gr (sc), qr, yr, cl (yr), + (qr, 
yr); entered, sc, sx (sc), tr (sx, sc); finishing first year, sx, sc; 

69 



received by transfer, sc, sx (sc) ; transferred to other schools, sx,. 
sc (sx); new pupils, sx; re-admitted, yr; average age, sc, gr, sx. 
(gr), over IS (sx, sc) ; average per teacher, gr, tr, sc; absence, 
average, sx, sc (sx) ; varying degrees of, %; not absent, sc, yr; 
varying degrees of non-absence 

Tardiness — pupils, yr, % (yr) ; cases of tardiness, yr; not tardy, sc 

Colored High Scfioois 

Enrollment — yr, sx (a), subject (cl), sx (ci), sc (sx (c!) ), na (sc), 
+ (yr), % (yr); registration, + (yr), sc (sx), a (yr), qr (yr, cf 
(yr) ), sx, % (yr) ; average, yr, sc, mo; including temporary with- 
drav^als, sx, yr; excluding transfers, sc, sx (sc) ; net, sx, sc (sx); 
attendance, average, sx, -f (yr), mo, % (sc, mo, yr) ; persistency, 
by % da. absences (sc) ; remaining at end of year, sx (yr, gr), qr, 
yr, cl (yr), -f (qr, yr) ; entered, sc, sx (sc) ; received by transfer, 
sc, sx (sc) ; transfered to other schools, sx, sc (sx) ; new pupils,. 
sx; readmitted, yr; average per teacher, sc; not absent, sc, yr; 
tardy, yr, % (yr) ; cases of tardiness, yr; not tardy, sc 

Training and Normal Schools 

Enrollment — tr (yr), sc, sx, gr, -f, bp, na, de (tr) ; end of year, sx (gr);: 
net, sc, average 

Registration — dt, sc, yr, -f, tr (gr, sx (gr) ), cl, a (sx (gr) ), gr, qr 
(yr), sx (a); excluding transfers, sx; including temporary with- 
drawals.yr, sc (yr); net, yr, tr, sc; average, yr, + (%), sx (%) ; %,. 
tr (gr, sx (gr) ) ; received by transfer, sx; transfered to other 
schools, sx; new pupils; entered, sx; average per teacher, gr 

Attendance — average, dt, sc, tr (gr), sx, yr ( + ); %, yr, tr (gr); aver- 
age per teacher, gr; absence, average; not absent; cases of tardi- 
ness, yr 

All Evening Schools 

Enrollment — sx, na (sx, bp (sx); English-speaking adults; foreigners- 
learning English, yr (sx), +, sc, a (sc); occupation, sx; net, sx, 
sc (sx); registration, yr, -f; average, yr, +, sc; attendance, aver- 
age, a (sx, sc (sx) ), sx, yr, +, English-speaking adults; foreign- 
ers learning English; occupation; % on enrollment of English- 
speaking adults, yr; of foreigners learning English, sc; average 
no. evenings attended per pupil, sx; persistency, sx, sc (sx); aver- 
age per teacher, sc; average age, yr; sessions, sx 

Colored Evening Schools 

Enrollment — sc; registration, sc; average, sc; attendance, average,, 
sc, % (sc, dt); persistency, sc; average per teacher, sc 

70 



Evening Elementary Schools 

Enrollment — dt (sx), na (sc, sx), +» co (sc), so, sx (so), yr, bp (so, 
sx (sc) ); registration, yr (dt), + (% (dt), sc), so; average, dt, yr, 
sc," attendance, average, dt, sx, sc (sx), de, yr (dt) ; %, + (dt); 
English-speaking adults, so; %, so," on registration (dt (sc) ); on 
enrollment (sc, dt (sc) ) ; on average register (dt (sc) ) ; average 
no. evenings attended per pupil, sx, sc (sx) ; sessions, so; aver- 
age per teacher, sc; absence, average, sx 

Evening High Schools 

Enrollment — ^dt (sx), +, na (sc (sx) ), bp, sc (sx), sx; subject (so); 
registration, dt, yr, + (%); subject; residence district; average, 
dt, yr, sc (sx) 

Attendance — average, yr, dt, sx, sc (sx), %; residence district, subject 
(sc) ; % on enrollment, dt (sx), sc; % on registration, dt, subject; 
% on average registration, dt; average no. evenings attended per 
pupil, sc, sx (sc) ; remaining at close of year, sc (sx) ; average 
per teacher, dt, sc; absence, average, sc (sx) ; sessions, sc 

Evening, Technical, Drawing and Cooking Schools 

Enrollment, sc; registration, sc, average, sc, yr; attendance, average, 
sc, yr, % (sc), + (yr) ; absence, average; sessions, sc 

Trade and Industrial Schools 

Enrollment — sc (gr), % (yr), a (de, sx (da) ), co, sx (co), de (sx), 
subject (sc) ; membership, average, sx, de (sc), co (sx), yr, sc; 
attendance, average, sx, co (sx) , sc, % (sc) ; average age 

Free Lectures, Evening Recreation, Domestic 
Science and IVIanual Training Centres 

Enrollment — sx, gr, yr (sx), centres (sc), average; membership, gr, sc 
(gr), average, gr, sc (gr); attendance, aggregate, dt; average 
daily, sc, dt; average weekly, yr, sx (yr); centres (sc) ; tardiness, 
centres (sc) ; absence, centres (sc) 

Special Classes: Non English-speaking, 

Work-certificate, German, Preparatory, 

Special Pupils 

Enrollment — a, dt (a), so; language, na, sx; age-groups; registration, 
tr (gr); net, tr, gr, bp; average, groups, sx; attendance, tr (gr), 

71 



•4-; perfect, sc; average duration; varying degrees of absence, sc; 
new pupils, tr; rapid progress, a, dt (a) 

Vacation Industrial, Manual Training, 

Kindergarten, Primary, Grammar, Private and 

Parochial Schools and Playgrounds 

Enrollment — dt (sc), sc, sx; on waiting list, sc; registration, average, 
sc (sx); attendance, aggregate days, dt (sc, kind of playground); 
average, dt (sc, kind of playground), sx (sc), % (sc, dt) ; average 
per teacher, sc 

School Baths 

Enrollment— da (sc) ; week (sc) ; yr (sc); attendance, sx (dt, time of 
da. (dt) ) ; average weekly 

Corporate Schools 
Registration, sc 



72 



POINTS OF AGREEMENT AS TO UNIFORMITY 

School Reports Are Not Now Uniform 

State with state 

City with city 

District with district within a city 

Year with year 
Uniformity is Desirable if Practicable 

So far as public schools have common experience 

So far as public schools have common needs 
Uniformity Would Benefit 

Administrators 

Teachers 

Pupils 

Taxpayers 

Students of education 
There is a Practicable Minimum of Uniformity 

In content 

In form 

In nomenclature 

UNSETTLED QUESTIONS AS TO UNIFORMITY 

What needs and what experiences are common to all public schools? 

What should appear in summaries? 

What main divisions are significant ? 

What subdivisions should be given for each main division ? 

Where should percentages be used? 

What material should be published annually — biennially — not 

more than once in five years? 
What uniform current records are necessary in order to furnish 

material for minimum uniform reports ? 

What, if any, material should be omitted from city reports but 
included in state and national reports ? 

73 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



mv 



K^. 



BUREAU OF MUNICIPAL 





May 3rd, 1907 Incorporated as "Bureau of Municipal Researclf 

PURPOSES 

To promote efficient and economical municipal government; to promote 
the adoption of scientific methods of accounting and of reporting the 
details of municipal business; with a view to fiacilitatiug the work of 
public officials; to secure constructive publicity in matters pertaining to 
municipal problems ; to collect, to classify, to analyze, to correlate, 
to interpret and to publish facts as to the administration of municipal 
government. (Articles of Incorporation) 

PRINCIPAL REPORTS, .lANUARY, 1906 to JULY, 1909 

I Some Phases of the Work of the Department of Street 

Cleaning 30c. 

3 *Salary Increases Not Provided for in Budget 

5 *The city of New York, the Street Railroad Companies and 

a Million and a Half Dollars 

6 *How Manhattan is Governed 

7 Analysis of the Salary Expenditure of the Department of 

Health of the City of New York for the Year 1906 

8 A Department of Municipal Audit and Examination 30c. 

9 Making a Municipal Budget ; Functional Accounts and Beoords 

for the Department of Health 60c. 

10 *New York City's Department of Finance 

I I The Park Question, Part I, Critical Study and Constructive 

Suggestions Pertaining to Administrative and Accounting 
Methods of the Department of Parks: Manhattan, and 
Richmond $1.10 

12 The Park Question, Part II, Critical Study and Constructive 

Suggestions Pertaining to Revenue and Deposits of the 
Department of Parks : Manhattan and Richmond 60c. 

13 Memorandum of Matters Relating to New York City's Debt 

that Suggest the Necessity either for Judicial Ruling or 
for Legislation 30c. 

14 *Bureau of Child Hygiehe 40c. 

15 Questions Answered by School Reports as They Are 

16 New York City's Debt : Facts and Law Relating to the 

Constitutional Limitation of New York's Indebtedness 35c. 

17 Collecting Water Revenues: Methods Employed by the 

Bureau of Water Register, Manhattan, with Suggestions 
for Reorganization 50c. Dlg'est of same, free on application 

18 What Should New York's Next Mayor Do ? lOc. 

19 School Progress and School Facts 25c. 

REPORTS IN PROGRESS, JULY, 1909 

Administration of Department of Water Supply, Gas and 

Electricity 
Real Estate Transactions, Department of Finance 
Tenement House Administration 
Bureau of Supplies and Repairs, Department of Police 

Series of Reports : New York as Revenue Producer, as Budget 
Maker, as Operator of Shops, etc. 

* Out of print 



